The legislative elections held in Venezuela on December 4th 2005 saw the deployment and successful operation of Smartmatic’s automated voting system. This electoral event was a complex one due to the number of candidates and offices to be elected; however, the process was quick, fluid and problem-free.
For these elections, 3,555 candidates ran for 184 parliament seats throughout the country: 167 National Assembly deputies (97 chosen nominally, i.e. by their first and last names; 65 enrolled in party lists; 3 indigenous representatives and 2 representing the excess over the average population per electoral circumscription), 12 deputies of the Latin American Parliament and 5 deputies of the Andean Parliament.
14,469,027 Venezuelans were cleared to exercise their right to vote and chose their legislative representatives in 9,235 polling centres, which were automated and distributed all over the nation.
Scope
During the 2005 parliamentary elections, Smartmatic deployed 27,330 voting machines. 100% of the machines in the 9,235 automated polling centres were installed and set up in record time, and worked perfectly since the start of the process.
This electoral event had the support of 11,404 voting machine operators (OMV) in action and 1,503 contingency operators; 84 data storage operators located in 42 national data storage centres (which held the removable memories of those automatic polling centres without the technical means for transmitting results); 1,722 support technicians (TS) allowing for a 10% emergency margin for the manual collection of precinct counts and the processes of tallying and winner appointment.
90 seconds was the average time to vote with Smartmatic technology during these parliamentary elections, including the 4 seconds the machine takes to print a voting voucher.
Audits
Among the evaluations that Smartmatic’s electoral solution underwent before the parliamentary elections, we can find the following:
Engineering tests (October 28th and 29th 2005): The CNE carried out a national electoral data transmission test that validated the system’s infrastructure technology. For this engineering test, a total of 341 voting
machines were deployed, which were set up to transmit data from 317 readied polling centres and the country’s 24 regional electoral boards, in order to measure the capacity and functionality of the telecommunication systems to be used by the machines during the December 4th 2005 elections. The test showed 93% effectiveness in data transmission.
Voting simulation (November 13th 2005): For the development of this public activity, 4,200 voting machines were set up, together with 132 data collection machines and 4,200 polling centres. 51 of these centres were chosen as pilot centres that operated just as they would have on Election Day, with all of the infrastructure, logistical and security devices operational. The efficient and effective logistic and technological operation of the voting system was ratified.
Audit of the source code (November 17th 2005): In this test, technicians from the National Electoral Council, Smartmatic and the political organizations accredited by the electoral body, checked the source code of the machines’ software to determine, among several other things, that it was correctly written, free of flaws and did what was supposed to. This is, the audit allowed to check that the software performed the function it was designed for and not any other hidden activity. The proper operation of the software was verified.
Pre-dispatch audit (November 27th 2005): Once the programming for the 27,330 machines for the Municipal and Parish elections was complete, 137 of them were audited (0.5% of the total of electoral units); these were
randomly selected. This audit showed “zero error” and proved once more that Smartmatic’s solution delivers exact results.
Closing audit (December 04th 2005): At the end of Election Day, 12,260 of the ballot boxes holding the voting vouchers were opened, which amounted to approximately 45% of the 27,330 machines deployed nationwide. This audit faithfully validated the election results and reconfirmed the Smartmatic system’s reliability. Both the Organization of American States (OAE) and the European Union (EU), present in these audits, stated that the voting machines were highly dependable and were able to safekeep the voters’ will.
