Brazil's Electronic Voting Machine Turns 30 with Greater Accessibility and Reaffirmed Security - Folha de S.Paulo

Brazil’s electronic voting machine marks 30 years of use in Brazilian elections in 2026. Created to gradually replace paper ballots, it debuted in the 1996 municipal elections in 57 municipalities, reaching about 32.5 million voters, one-third of the electorate. By 2000, it was already being used nationwide. The idea of mechanizing voting is older: the 1932 Electoral Code already provided for "voting machines."

The process that would lead to the current voting machine gained momentum in the 1980s with the creation of a computerized national voter registry, and advanced with the transmission of data to the TSE in 1989 and the electronic processing of the results of a general election in 1994.

The voting machine project began in 1995. Since 1996, 14 models have been used. In subsequent years, features were introduced to increase security and accessibility, including biometrics, audio for visually impaired voters and the Digital Vote Record. This year, the TSE plans to use 563,910 voting machines from four generations.