Tenders were invited today for software to provide electronic voting and electronic vote counting systems for the ACT Legislative Assembly election due in October 2001.

This latest development in the ACT's move to trial electronic voting in 2001 follows passage of amendments to the Electoral Act by the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday, 6 December 2000, to permit electronic voting and vote counting.

The ACT Electoral Commission has published an advertisement for a Request For Tender (RFT) in the Computer section of today's Canberra Times seeking software solutions to provide for electronic voting and vote counting. The advertisement will appear again tomorrow in the Computing section of The Australian.

The RFT will ask interested suppliers to propose solutions to:

• provide electronic voting within four pre-poll centres around Canberra and at a number of polling places on polling day;
• be able to data enter electors' preferences from paper ballots; and
• use a computer program which combines electronic voting data and data entered from paper ballots to undertake the distribution of preferences under the ACT's Hare Clark system.

Interested companies will have until 1 February 2001 to submit an RFT to the Commission.