The Superior Electoral Court (TSE) held this Saturday (26), the eve of the second round of the 2024 municipal elections, the verification ceremony of the systems responsible for receiving and totaling or summing up the electorate’s votes.
In a note, the TSE highlighted that the so-called Verification Ceremony of the Integrity and Authenticity of Electoral Systems represents “another audit and inspection opportunity that highlights the transparency and reliability of the electronic voting system”.
During the ceremony, representatives from several institutions were able to verify whether the totalization system is the same as the one digitally signed by the supervisory entities themselves in the Digital Signature and Sealing of Electoral Systems act, concluded on September 10th.
“The objective of Saturday’s event is to certify that the system in operation at the TSE has not undergone any type of modification during the period”, highlighted the TSE. The following systems were checked:
– Totalization Management System (Sistot): set of programs that aim to monitor receipts and manage the totalizations of election results based on files processed by the Ballot File Receiver;
– Ballot File Receiver (RecArquivos): system responsible for receiving the packages sent by the File Transporter containing ballots and forwarding them for totalization;
– Ballot Box File Information (InfoArquivos): system responsible for providing the File Carrier with the status of files sent and received in the Electoral Court database.
Hashes
The three systems had their digital signatures validated by the entities and compared with those generated during sealing. At the ceremony, the TSE Information Technology Secretariat again calculated the so-called hashes or digital summaries of the files involved in the totalization procedure.
THE hash is a unique code that serves to summarize a large file into a sequence of numbers and letters, much more synthetic than the source material. Different files generate hashes different, no matter how small the difference between them.
“If there were any changes to the original file, the summary would also be changed. This ensures the possibility of tracking any changes in softwarefiles and systems developed by the Electoral Court”, highlighted the TSE.
