As campaign officially ends today, the stage is set for Ecuadorians to head to the polls this coming Sunday for the 2014 sectional elections.

Ecuador’s voter roll currently has 11,682,314 registered voters. They will be choosing:

• 23 Prefects
• 23 Vice prefects
• 221 Mayors
• 867 Urban council seats
• 438 Rural council seats
• 4.079 Members of Parish Boards

An estimated 137 million dollars will be spent organizing these elections.

During the last few years Ecuador has shown interest in adopting voting technology to enhance transparency, efficiency, and specially, speed in obtaining results. To that end, three e-voting pilots will occur as voters cast their ballots electronically in three provinces and regions: Santo Domingo de Tsáchilas, Azuay and La Morita. 10 % of the voter roll will cast an electronic vote on Sunday.

To guarantee the correct functioning of these voting systems, several audits and simulation tests were carried out. Authorities are very optimistic about the future of e-voting in the country.

Besides e-voting, Ecuador will be implementing a quick count system to speed up election results in approximately 40% of the precincts. 1,500 scanners will be distributed across 1300 precincts to with the idea of announcing results within a period of two hours from poll closing.

Observation missions from around the world have arrived to Ecuador to monitor the election and validate transparency standards are met. UNASUR (the organization representing the Union of South American Nations) has made very positive remarks in the weeks leading to the elections when evaluating the performance of electoral authorities.