Regional Elections 2004
Venezuela
Regional Elections held in Venezuela on October 13, 2004, represented a very important logistics and technical effort for Smartmatic, as main supplier of the automated electoral technology. This election was one of the most complex events in the democratic history of our country, because in just one day 609 representatives were chosen from over 7.753 candidates: 337 mayors, 23 governors, 229 representatives to the legislature, 13 metropolitan council members and 7 district council members.
The technological platform at the service of the electoral authorities was subject to different auditing and evaluation processes before and after the elections. This enabled the use of 23.595 SAES3000 voting machines distributed throughout the country in the 5.340 automated voting centers, along with 54.000 electronic ballots, as well the technical equipment, the human resources, the tabulation, transmission and tally process needed for an election.
SAES makes voting easier
During the regional elections, SAES proved to have two more strong points as a voting solution: on one hand, despite the complexity of the elections, the possibility of automatically tallying the results in a fast, safe and reliable way; and on the other, that the alliances between the parties or the candidates that took place few days before the elections were carried out at a tally and summary automation level. Only a solid and flexible technology, as the one proposed by Smartmatic, allows the necessary changes requested by the political actors few days before the event.
Some of the posts that had to be voted for (Deputies to the legislative Council, Representatives of the Metropolitan and District Council) were elected through a system called Personalized Proportional Representation. In this case adjudication is significantly more complicated. It was like this that automating the tally process, was without a doubt, an advantage both to the electoral power and the citizens who were able to choose their candidates in an easier way.
