More than 5 million voters are eligible to vote in Paraguay’s municipal elections this Sunday, October 4. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., and turnout is expected to be close to 60%. Each voter will choose candidates for mayor and city council on a machine that prints the vote on a ballot with a chip.
After selecting their candidates, voters hold the ballot up to the machine’s reader. The screen displays the choice recorded on the chip, which voters can compare with the printed selection before folding the ballot and placing it in the ballot box. This procedure, known as hot verification, does not require scanning a QR code.
The machines have built-in batteries lasting 12 to 14 hours. If a machine fails, it can be replaced without losing the vote: the record is preserved on the printed ballot, and voting resumes on another machine after the station’s identification card is scanned. The Superior Court of Electoral Justice of Paraguay (TSJE), the country’s electoral authority, estimates that historical failures of these devices have not exceeded 1%, as detailed by Carlos María Ljubetic, director of Electoral Processes.
A total of 14,711 polling stations will be set up, each with one machine. The TSJE has 18,000 machines: about 1,300 will be placed at the entrances to polling locations for training, while the rest will make up a technical reserve equal to 12% of the total. The Electoral Justice also provides an official virtual simulator for voters to practice casting their ballots.
Transport to Alto Paraguay began by road to Concepción, from where the equipment will continue by river. The main operation, covering 55% of the machines allocated to most departments in the interior, will use trucks and be accompanied by more than 4,000 TSJE staff members. In Central Department, home to nearly 30% of the electorate, distribution will take place on Friday; in Asunción, the equipment will arrive at polling locations on Saturday morning.
Voters can check their polling place and station number on the Electoral Justice’s official portal. On election day, they must present a Paraguayan identity card, whether valid or expired, as stated in the instructions issued for the procedure.
After 5 p.m., polling-station officials and voters who are in line will still be allowed to vote. Counting of the tally sheets is expected to begin at 5:30 p.m. At 5:45 p.m., the Preliminary Electoral Results Transmission (TREP) system will begin publishing preliminary results online. Transmission centers (CTX) set up at each polling location will digitize the tally sheets and send them in coded format; an automated intelligent character recognition (ICR) system will process the figures for publication in real time.
Ljubetic expects the mayoral results to be complete between 7:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. By then, nearly all elected city council members are also expected to be known, with a few exceptions.