On July 5th 2015, citizens from the province of Cordoba headed to the polls to elect executive and legislative authorities.
In the cities of La Falda and Marcos Juarez, 104 SAES-3377 voting machines were deployed to receive 34,784 eligible voters. This was Argentina’s first experience with a fully-verifiable electronic voting solution.
Thanks to Smartmatic’s technology, authorities were able to publish official results only 45 minutes after voting ended, a record.
Besides providing electronic voting machines, Smartmatic guaranteed the timely consolidation, transmission and aggregation of results.
Smartmatic was also responsible for supplying a preliminary results solution to process count reports from the polling centres were voting was done manually – 2,659,058 eligible voters.
Context
On May 25th, Smartmatic signed two contracts with the Superior Justice Court of the Province of Cordoba for the supply and implementation of an electronic voting solution for the cities of La Falda and Marcos Juarez; and a preliminary results solution for the rest of the province.
With approximately 3.3 million inhabitants and 8.7% of Argentina’s voters, Cordoba represents a key province in the transition process from manual to electronic voting. This transition is one of the reasons Cordoba’s Superior Justice Court selected Smartmatic’s advanced technology to help automate its elections.
Technology
SAES-3377
Smartmatic designed the SAES-3377 voting machine to make voting as easy as it can be. Its 17’’ screen displayed all the options available for voters in La Falda (12,784 voters, 39 polling stations in 3 centres) and Marcos Juarez (22,000 voters, 65 polling stations in 6 centres).
As with all of Smartmatic’s voting technology, the machines allowed each citizen to validate that his/her vote was registered correctly by producing a printed voting voucher. The machines safeguarded the votes cast with the most accurate, verifiable and secure technology in the market.
Preliminary results
In the 7,892 polling stations were voting and counting was done manually, 2,659,058 voters were registered to vote. They were distributed across 26 electoral sections comprising approximately 634 electoral circuits and sub-circuits.
Unlike electronic voting, where votes can be tallied instantly, manual counting requires a very sophisticated logistic operation to produce timely preliminary results.
Cordoba’s preliminary results in five steps
1. Although polling centres closed at 18:00, every voter still in line at that time was allowed to enter the polling centre and vote.
2. Polling centre officials (teachers) counted the votes and filled count reports manually.
3. The Argentine Postal Service was hired to transport the count reports from the 1,154 polling centres to 18 digitization centres. They were also responsible for scanning and transmitting those reports to their main headquarters in Buenos Aires for a verification process. Later, the post office sent to Smartmatic’s upload centre in Cordoba the digital images of count reports via Internet for further processing.
4. Inside Smartmatic’s upload centre there were 230 stations ready to upload the data written in count reports. There were 320 control stations, manned by election authorities, so any inconsistency or problem could be resolved.
5. Smartmatic aggregated count reports and published results online according to the instructions of the Provincial Electoral Court.
Download a diagram of the vote counting process in Cordoba (in Spanish)
Smartmatic’s system for aggregating and broadcasting results meets the highest standards of quality. It uses a log system that guarantees the system’s auditability at all times, and guarantees that results are accurate and transparent.