Smartmatic successfully carried out an electronic voting pilot in Colombia

Bogota, October 31, 2007 - On Saturday 27th October, Colombia experienced the benefits of the electronic vote as a secure, accurate and reliable tool to exercise the right to express your democratic will. Throughout a pilot carried out in Bogota, San Andres, Pereira and Bucaramanga -as a reception and tabulation center-, Smartmatic deployed its automated electoral technology featuring 27 SAES touch screen voting machines.

During the voting pilot, the citizens pretended to be in a real election in which they had to vote for the President of the Republic and the Senators to Congress, represented by fictional characters. The main objective was to promote citizen participation and a national debate regarding the electronic vote. Meanwhile, the Registraduria Nacional (official organizer of electoral events) accomplished its commitment to the mandate that requests Colombia to carry out automated voting pilots before the elections of 2010.

Colombians were gladly informed that only 40 minutes after the pilot closing time, 80% of the votes had been already tabulated and before 10 pm Smartmatic’s Press Room announced the results. This voting pilot proved that SAES –Smartmatic Automated Election System- technology makes voting easier and more reliable. The citizens have an electronic ballot similar to the paper existing one and each voter receives a voting paper trail in which they can verify their electoral selection before casting it into the ballot box.

The success of the electoral pilot in these three Colombian cities included not only the technological appeal of the SAES voting machines (hardware and software benefits) but also their ease of use and fastness. The electors took around a minute to vote and there were no null votes or complications.

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About Smartmatic

Smartmatic is a multinational company that specializes in the design and end-to-end deployment of complex purpose-specific technology solutions. With an unsurpassed technology base, continuous innovation, and quality in processes and results, Smartmatic is organized around three business areas: Electronic voting systems, intelligent and integrated security systems for large enterprises and governments, and advanced solutions for people registration and authentication for a wide range of government applications.
Smartmatic is a privately held company with offices in the US, Mexico, Venezuela, Barbados, Spain, Philippines and Taiwan.  It has more than 200 employees worldwide.  Its capacity for innovation and wide range of products and services have earned Smartmatic extensive recognition in the technology community worldwide.

Contact Information:
For additional information on this press release, please write us to press@smartmatic.com.