TSE To Spend ¢302 Million To Transmit Election Results
The Comisión de Transmisión de Datos del Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones (TSE) announced yesterday that it will spend ¢302 million colones (us$606.000 dollars) to tell you who is president on election day.

The TSE unveiled its "Plan General" for Sunday February 5 that will transmit over the internet voting results from all 1.116 elections stations. The announcement was made yesterday by Oscar Fonseca, president of the TSE.

With the election results are one of the last items of business for the TSE commissions that oversee the election process and, according to Fonseca, getting the results out as quickly as possible is the objective of the "Plan".

Beginning at 8pm on election day, the TSE, under the strictest of security, will begin the process of tabulating the voting results and transmitting the data from the voting stations to offices in San José and to the public.

Fonseca explained that schools, colleges and old age homes are among the local centres known as "Centros de Recepción y Transmisión (CRT)" that will be used to process the information, which will then be sent to the TSE central offices by fax, computers and telephone, depending on the circumstance.

The CRT will transmit data from the 6.163 polling booths all around the country on election day.

Part of the program is using "digital" signatures and digital certificates to verify the origin of the data sent over the internet. The TSE is confident that the data transmission is secure and correct.

The voting results for President, Vice-Presidents and Legislative Deputies will be known almost instantly. The data will include the number of votes, null votes and graphic information of the results.

Of course, the TSE will have computer techies on hand to ensure that the equipment works and be there in the event of any problems, while ICE and RACSA techies will watch over the telephone lines and communications network used in the program.