Brazil: Improving communications advances municipal elections

Brazil is one of the world’s voting technology pioneers. Voting is compulsory and Brazilians have been voting electronically for over 15 years.

It’s the fifth largest country in the world. There’s a huge number of registered voters – over 140 million. And it’s difficult to provide communications to remote regions.

So our role was to support deployment and configuration of satellite devices that enabled data and voice communications across the sixteen most isolated states during the 2012 municipal elections.

Then in another bidding process a month later, the TSE selected the ESF consortium (Smartmatic Brasil Ltda, Smartmatic International Corporation, Engetec and Fixti) to provide elections support and battery maintenance.

"This year’s municipal elections had the lowest cost per vote since 1996, when e-voting started” - Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha, President of the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), 10 July, 2012.