Smartmatic’s ePen to modernise United Kingdom council elections

London, 17 October, 2014 – Smartmatic, the world’s number one voting technology and services company, was involved in a local election in the UK last week. The ‘ePen’ is a digital pen, which streamlines the various phases of the election process, improving the speed, accuracy and integrity of the traditional ballot counting process. Smartmatic’s ePen facilitated the ballot count and election results process during the by-election of the West Heath Ward of Rushmoor Borough Council on 9th October. 

During the West Heath by-election, Smartmatic’s ePen technology allowed election officials to digitally capture count reports, and to easily and quickly verify and transmit the results. The ePen enabled the rapid and accurate processing of two key verification forms in the election in an efficient way.  These forms were the ballot box verification form, which aggregates the count for each ballot box; and the election results verification form, which had the election results for each candidate. 

“Since 2003, Rushmoor Borough Council have been at the forefront of modernising UK elections and we continue to recognise the role that technology can play in supporting the principles of democracy – not only to help our electorate, but to support our election team,” said Rushmoor Borough Council’s, Head of Democratic Services, Andrew Colver. 

“Smartmatic’s ePen solution was easy to use and reduced the time it normally takes to collect, validate and publish election results.  It can be used just like a regular ink pen, but radically improves the speed, accuracy and integrity of the election process”, commented Colver. 

“We are delighted that we had the opportunity to deploy our ePen in such an important election in the UK and were able to demonstrate the benefits of this technology,” said Antonio Mugica, CEO of Smartmatic.  “We are committed to growing the UK market and offering technology solutions that streamline the complex process of collecting and transmitting election results, whilst also ensuring their accuracy and privacy.”