Backgrounder: Electronic ballot boxes used in leadership elections

BEIJING, March 15 (Xinhua) -- Electronic ballot boxes with high-speed image processing systems have been used in leadership elections during the ongoing first session of the 12th National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature.

Nearly 3,000 NPC deputies cast their votes using 28 electronic ballot boxes on Thursday and Friday to elect the new leaders of China's legislature, state and military. The results were announced within about 20 minutes due to the use of an electronic vote-counting system.

Each box can hold 1,000 ballots, said an executive from Chengdu Information Technology Co., Ltd., a company affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences that developed the ballot box.

The company executive said the boxes' image processing system scans the tickets the instant they are inserted into the box, feeding the results into a backend system that can calculate the election results as soon as the final ticket is inserted.

Two servers, including a backup server, are being used to ensure voting accuracy in the event of a servor error, he said.

Just over 2 million tickets were tested on the boxes to ensure their stability and accuracy before the election.

On Thursday, Zhang Dejiang was elected chairman of the Standing Committee of the 12th NPC. Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, was elected president of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and chairman of the PRC Central Military Commission.

Li Keqiang was endorsed as Chinese premier Friday morning after the NPC deputies voted and approved the nomination of Li, by newly-elected President Xi, as the candidate for premier.

Electronic ballot boxes have been in use since the 12th CPC National Congress held in 1982.