6,465 candidates registered with the National Electoral Council (CNE) before the June deadline. Up for grabs were 165 seats on the country’s National Assembly, or Parliament.

110 elected by nominal vote, 52 elected by list vote and 3 representatives of the indigenous population. During the same process 12 deputies to the Latin American Parliament were also elected.

According to the CNE, there were 17,575,975 citizens registered to vote. And we provided 12,562 polling stations, in which we installed 36,563 voting machines.

Smartmatic was responsible for creating and setting up the automated system – to guarantee its proper functioning. Additionally, the CNE and political parties tested and audited the whole platform, to probe for any possible issue before the electoral event.

Scope

September 26th’s electoral process was 100% automated. That is, every polling location had voting machines and electronic ballots.  The election featured:

• 36,563 voting machines (SAES-3000, SAES-3300 and SAES-4000 models)
• 36,603 batteries distributed to contingency centers as a backup in case of power failures
• Some 20,000 operators, all of whom were hired and trained by Smartmatic
• 17,575,975 voters on the Electoral Registry distributed in 87 regional circumscriptions, which elected the 165 members of the Legislative Power
• 57,010 voters living abroad registered in embassies and consulates, who were only able to vote for the Latin American Parliament
• 36,773 active polling tables, distributed in 12,562 polling centers (most located in educational institutions)
• The states with the most voters, and therefore the most polling centers and stations, were: Zulia, with 1,128 centers and 4,393 polling stations; Miranda, 978 centers and 3,729 polling stations; Lara, 903 centers and 2,367 polling stations; and Distrito Capital with 809 centers and 3085 polling stations
• Of the 1,185 new polling centers set up for this electoral event, for the first time there were 100 mobile polling stations for citizens in remote or inaccessible locations, where there was neither the infrastructure for the stations could operate nor the space to build them

Services

In addition to creating and deploying the hardware and software for this 100% automated election, we also provided a range of important services to ensure that it was transparent, efficient and successful:

• Election project management to define specific goals, coordinate thousands of variables, tasks, people and suppliers effectively and efficiency – and to guarantee the success of the project.
• Hiring of approximately 18,566 employees, including voting machine operators, contingency transmission operators and tallying technicians
• Selection, training and hiring of support technicians (2,990 nationwide), inventory operators (400 nationwide), Fast Response Center operators (501 nationwide) and National Central Support Center operators (229)
• Set up of some 50,000 voting teams for each one of the events: training of operators, voter education, engineering tests, voting simulation and the election day itself
• Supply of 36,603 12V DC batteries as power back-up
• Printing of the ballots for the different events
• Operation and logistics of the Regional Attention Centers (RAC)
• Operation and logistics of the National Support Center (CNS)
• Support control and management of personnel and equipment contingencies
• Report of activities through specialized software (Election-360) provided by Smartmatic to the electoral organism in order to control the attendance of operators and technicians in charge of deploying the voting machines. The software allowed for real time monitoring of the installation, opening, closure, transmission and audit of the polling tables, as well as the support incidents during the day of the event
• Installation and removal of equipment in the polling centers
• Preparation, installation and operation of contingency machines for the Contingency Transmission Centers

Audits

Audits are an essential part of a transparent election in which everyone can trust. And we believe that all parties, electoral commissions and observers need to be able to audit an election at every stage. These groups evaluated this election’s voting system, its hardware and its software, transmission and tallying, during the following tests.

Engineering tests (1 August)

In 366 points throughout Venezuela, its electoral commission validated the deployed technological infrastructure and the proper functioning of the networks through which the electoral data will be transmitted: landlines, cellular and satellite phones. The technological transmission platform was verified by the joint work of the CNE (Venezuela’s National Electoral Council), Smartmatic, CANTV, officers of the CEOFAB (the Venezuelan army’s strategic command) and school districts from all over the country.

Voting software audits (9-11 August)

Technicians from the political parties and the CNE evaluated the machine programming. Smartmatic representatives demonstrated how the machines’ software worked during each of their functions (opening, voting, closing, transmission etc.)

Technology infrastructure audit (6 September, 2010)

Technicians from different civil organisations and from the CNE attended this audit. They revised the different components related to the operating system and access to safety devices to check everyone was happy with the infrastructure’s designs and technical languages.

Pre-dispatch audit (19 September 19)

189 voting machines were audited in the presence of technicians from civil and political organisations. For the first time ever, the CNE invited ambassadors and diplomatic representatives from 20 countries to attend this audit that recreated many of the technical processes that would be executed on Election Day.

Closing audit (26 September)

At the end of Election Day, a closing audit took place. This consisted of the opening of over 54% of the safekeeping boxes where the physical voting vouchers were stored, so that they were compared with the tallying act that had been printed and sent. This audit was open to the public.