Insular Council Election 2007
Curaçao

On April 20th, 2007 the Smartmatic voting solution featuring voter verifiable paper trail (vvpt) was used in the election of members to the Insular Council of Curacao, the biggest and most populated island of the Netherland Antilles.

The safety, auditability, swiftness and ease of use of the voting machines represented not only an advance towards modernization, but also towards the reliability of Curaçao’s electoral system. Over 74.000 citizens exercised their right to vote in 159 SAES3000 machines distributed along the island, in 106 voting centers.

Lizane Richards-Dindial, Curaçao’s Governor, noted some important benefits of Smartmatic’s technology and services saying, “Because Smartmatic’s voting technology is secure, auditable and voter-verified, Curacao’s citizens were able to have the safest and reliable election possible, and we are pleased to report all participants have accepted the validity of the results.”

The power of automation

In the case of the Curaçao Insular Council, the electoral automation made it possible to recognize, evaluate and solve one of the most common errors in manual electoral processes, namely irregularities during the manual ballot tally. During the process, discrepancies were found between the automated and the manual tally, which led to an immediate evaluation.

After the appropriate examination and audit, it was found through the automated recount that there were human errors during the ballot tally. With the support of the automated results and the voting registries printed in advance of the electoral event, it was possible to clarify the results and proceed to a correct awarding process.