Last updated on December 17, 2013

After the TSE feasibility committee issued its final report in August 1995, a new technical committee was convened to more thoroughly investigate and specify the requirements for the new system. They also elaborated the request for tender to be issued by the TSE. The request would specify how the machine would be developed; how many machines would be required and their geographic distribution; training requirements; technical support requirements; documentation requirements; and plans for testing the submitted models. Importantly, the committee was also charged with specifying how different bids would be evaluated.

To develop the request for tender, the technical committee first published a request for comments and suggestions on their requirements for the electronic voting machine in the government register. They received over a dozen reports from a variety of private companies, government entities and universities. With this information, the TSE technical committee wrote a complete request for tender with three annexes that specified the required products and services; the technical requirements of the voting machine; and how any bid would be judged. Procurement rules for government purchases were followed and all criteria for judging bids by companies were public.

Companies that submitted a bid had to provide a working model that could pass 96 technical tests. Only those companies that passed all the tests would be considered for the bid. Five companies submitted a bid, but only three companies—IBM, Unisys and Procomp—submitted models that passed the 96 tests. Of these three companies, Unisys submitted the lowest bid of R$ 69,762,178.60 (about $63 million USD) and was selected to implement the new system.

Since the 1996 elections, the TSE has continued to use outside contractors to maintain and manufacture the electronic voting machines. In the last several elections, Diebold-Procomp won bids to manufacture the voting machines. In 2009, Diebold-Procomp delivered 194,000 machines for use in the 2010 elections.

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