United States, Boca Raton – December 31, 2021 – Election modernization had a remarkable 2021 as authorities from around the world relied on cutting-edge technology to overcome challenges and deliver successful elections. A leading election technology provider, Smartmatic helped conduct 24 elections in 11 countries providing a wide range of technology solutions, from election administration to voter authentication, all the way to online voting.
“2021 was a remarkable year for election modernization,” said Antonio Mugica, Smartmatic’s CEO. “Countries in all corners of the world relied on technology solutions to hold their elections, even in the face of a pandemic, lock downs and faltering supply chains. I’m proud that we were able to assist authorities in the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Honduras, Albania, Estonia, Zambia, Benin, Uganda, Georgia, Argentina, and the United States.”
London
Working with partner CGI, the primary contractor to the Greater London Authority, Smartmatic ensured the count for the London Mayoral and London Assembly elections was a success, processing approximately 7.9 million ballot papers (nearly 10.5 million votes) over two days. The counting period was extended to allow for COVID restrictions, including reduced staff and social distancing. Authorities published results on its public server in real-time. London has more than 6.1 million registered voters.
Los Angeles County
Following a massive deployment for the 2020 general election, Los Angeles County again used its Smartmatic-built VSAP ballot marking devices in several local elections. A trusted partner of America’s largest voting jurisdiction, Smartmatic provided deployment logistic services as well as Help Desk support in four of those elections.
Bulgaria
In 2021, Bulgaria took a decisive step toward the modernization of its elections with the deployment of Smartmatic A4-517 voting machines in 8 elections. Three of those deployments had nationwide reach and involved 9,600 Smartmatic voting machines. Working with Ciela Norma, the primary partner to Bulgaria’s Central Electoral Commission (CEC), Smartmatic also provided backend services and support functions, such as Help Desk.
During the November parliamentary elections, more than 400 voting machines were used at Bulgarian embassies in 21 countries, leading to the first-ever election in which votes cast abroad were tallied as timely as those cast in-country.
Albania
Albania’s Central Election Commission (CEC) modernized crucial phases of its 2021 elections using cutting-edge technology. 5,538 Smartmatic biometric voter authentication kits were used nationwide in 3,500 polling places to authenticate voters. To ensure a successful election, Smartmatic recruited and trained more than 460 election workers and provided extensive backend, logistics and voter-education services. In addition,
Electronic voting was also available in Tirana, the capital. Voters, political parties observers and other stakeholders praised the implementation of the new technology.
Estonia
Estonia held a new national election offering the online voting system developed by the Smartmatic-Cybernetica joint venture in 2014. Since the introduction of online voting in Estonia in 2005, voter participation has risen continuously. The 2021 elections saw online participation reach 47% of all votes cast.
Zambia
The Electoral Commission of Zambia deployed Smartmatic biometric e-Poll books during the Presidential and Parliamentary elections held in August. 1,000 portable biometric devices were used at polling sites to authenticate voters against Zambia’s clean voter database. The e-Poll books also helped administer polling stations.
Smartmatic provided registration services, training and 2,900 portable biometric kits to register voters ahead of the elections. These kits are equipped to capture voters’ biometric and biographical information, including personal data, fingerprints, facial photograph and signature. The company also helped conducting registry de-duplication to ensure a clean and reliable voter database.
Uganda
In 2021, Smartmatic assisted the Electoral Commission of Uganda to expand and update its nationwide voter authentication system. Smartmatic provided 38,500 biometric voter authentication kits; a central system to integrate, manage and administer kits; warehousing; installation, configuration and testing; call center services; and field logistics. Smartmatic also provided training for thousands of employees, including headquarter operators, field operators, support technicians and EC system administrators. This effort registered about 3 million new voters.
Honduras
The National Electoral Council of Honduras used a Smartmatic biometric solution to accurately authenticate more than 3 million voters during the general elections. This was Honduras’ first-ever deployment of biometrics.
International electoral observers, civil society organizations and political party representatives who closely monitored the entire process gave a positive rating to this first implementation of biometric technology in the country.
Benin
Using TIVI, Smartmatic’s online voting solution, Benin became the first African nation to use online voting in a binding government election. More than 47,000 voters cast their ballots using the online system during a 24-hour election period. The system design provided Benin officials with complete end-to-end verifiability, a key requirement to ensure transparency.
Georgia
Deployed a Smartmatic solution to electronically register and count votes for the two rounds of its municipal elections. Using our 1800-plus scanners, voters’ ballots were processed in 31 polling stations. Georgia is implementing a series of reforms and regulations to improve the integrity of its elections to make them more representative and to improve the efficiency of its election administration.
Argentina
Set new records for the speed and accuracy of its provisional results using a Smartmatic solution to digitize and transmitted tally reports. Using Smartmatic’s technology, some 13,000 operators digitized and transmitted tally reports from approximately 11,000 polling stations. This system was also employed in 2019, leading to considerable improvements in speed, accuracy and transparency at that time.
