FOLLOWING the success of the recent 2019 midterm elections, Smartmatic has vowed to keep on providing a secure voting technology and transparent poll process to the Philippines as the government looks for an alternative Automated Election System (AES).
“Smartmatic has been a leader in providing an efficient, secure and transparent automated election system in many counties and in the Philippines. We want to continue this and strengthen our partnership with the government in providing a secure, faster and credible election system,” said Ramaakanth Sake, president of Smartmatic Asia Pacific.
The company participated in the AES Technology Fair of the Department of Information and Communications Technology on July 15.
The event had different local and global providers presenting their concept or prototype of an alternative AES that could be utilized for the 2022 national and local elections.
Smartmatic showcased its latest direct recording electronic voting machines, which use a touch screen to eliminate the need for paper ballots and lessen the possibility of read errors.
Per the elections technology firm, the touch screen would need a voter’s fingerprint prior to its perusal.
In case of overvoting, the system provides real-time feedback so the voters may change their ballot before casting the vote. The Commission on Elections (Comelec) requires that the machine will print out a receipt to be used as a reference if ever a manual recount is needed.
In 2015 the Comelec thought of using the touch screens for the 2016 polls but scrapped the idea due to the cost of implementation.
Smartmatic started providing election technology to the Philippines in 2008 and since then has extended election tools and services in three national elections to some 55 million voters registering 3.1 billion votes.
For the recent elections this year, the Comelec bought a total of 97,350 vote-counting machines (VCMs) from Smartmatic.
Also, the company delivered 93,826 headphones, 93,826 modems, and hardware for the Election Management System that supports the operations of the entire automated platform.
Overseas, Smartmatic secured in June 2018 the contract to modernize the elections of Los Angeles County, the largest electorate in the US.
The Voting Solutions for All People (VSAP) will replace the county’s obsolete voting system that lacks technical and functional elasticity needed to continue to accommodate a growing and increasingly diverse electorate.
Smartmatic and its team will be responsible for systems integration, engineering and manufacturing of the system components designed by and for the county during prior phases of the VSAP program that centers on security, accessibility and usability.
This will make it easier for voters with disabilities or limited English proficiency to cast a ballot.
It will feature an independent, open-source developed vote tally system owned and operated by the county.
The government of Finnmark, a country in the eastern part of Norway, also tapped Smartmatic for its online election using blockchain technology.
It was previously implemented in a binding online poll in March 2016, when Smartmatic and Cybernetica helped the Utah Republican party to conduct its Presidential Preference Caucus.
Founded in Florida during the 2000 election, Smartmatic is focused on building the most secure, accessible and easy-to-use election technologies designed to safeguard the process from start to finish.
Since 2003, it has successfully designed and enforced secure voting technologies for election commissions on five continents in 25 countries, with more than 4.6 billion recorded and tabulated votes with zero security breaches.