Brazil elections 2022: Supreme Electoral Court TSE to expand access to ballot box source code

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The TSE will expand access to the source code of voting software for the academic and specialized community. According to the Supreme Electoral Court, the goal is to “increase the reliability of the electronic voting process and receive suggestions for improvement.

The measure is one of 10 presented in the “Action Plan to Increase Transparency of the Electoral Process.”

The document (full text) was prepared based on recommendations of the CTE (Election Transparency Commission), which approved the plan on Monday (25).

The commission includes representatives from Congress, the Armed Forces, the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB), other public institutions, and civil society.

In addition to expanding access to the source code of electoral software, the following measures were established:

• Establishment of the CTE – this measure is already in effect. The establishment of the organization was officially announced by the TSE in September 2021. According to the Court, it aims to improve the security and transparency of the electoral process and promote the participation of experts and society;
• Establishment of the OTE (Observatory for Electoral Transparency) – members “will be active in various phases, including participation in the preparation of information materials and an institutional campaign for society on the Transparency, Security and Integrity of Elections.”
• Anticipation of the review of source codes – the period of the
  participation of testing agencies in the specification and development phase of electoral systems is extended from 6 months to 1 year;
• Improvement of the TPS (public security test) – the number of registrations of investigators will be increased from 10 to 15 (up to 45 in total) and the period during which they will have access to source codes will be extended from 1 to 2 weeks;
• Increased participation of the control bodies in the ballot box preparation ceremony – during this event, the integrity and authenticity of the voting systems installed in the electronic ballot boxes and the proper functioning of the equipment will be verified;
• Further development of integrity testing of electronic ballot boxes – the sample of tested ballot boxes will be expanded;
• Publication of Digital Record of Votes (RDV) files and ballot box logs – according to TSE, “this is to facilitate the verification of the counting of votes in each electronic ballot box.”
• Encouraging the handing out of ballots by election officials – the measure aims to “create an additional handing out by election officials, but this can be extended to anyone interested since the ‘Boletim na Mão’ (Ballot in Hand) application developed by the TSE allows voters to access a digital copy of the ballots on their own cell phone or tablet.”
• Strengthening institutional communication – the Secom (Secretariat of Communication and Multimedia) of the TSE “has sought to develop and implement policies and communication strategies” to “work on the image of the institution in the internal and external public and disseminate its actions.”