The most advanced electronic voting system in the world

Eduardo Correia, Electoral Solutions V.P. explains Smartmatic´s advanced voting system.

Smartmatic's electronic voting system is the most advanced voting system in the world. It is the first of its kind to combining and integrating in a single experience the authentication and the voting process. I'm going to show you how the system works, and for that I'm going be acting as a voter that shows up for voting on Election Day at their polling place; in this specific case, in the polling station where I am registered to vote.

The first thing I do is to give my national identity card to the president of the voting machine, so the president can enter my identification number into the remote session activator. The remote session activator fetches the biographical information that matches my national id, so that the president of the machine can verify that the information stored in the system matches the one that appears in my id. Once that comparison is successful, the president continues to the next step, where the machine fetches the biometric information that is stored of me as a voter and it confirms that we will perform a biometric authentication. This step is key to ensure that no one else is going to vote for me, and I can vote only once per election. In this case, the machine confirms that the biometric information stored in the system is my fingerprint. Then the president can activate the voting session in the voting machine that will allow me to cast my vote.

First I'm presented with the electronic ballot where all the options are displayed. I will choose the option that I prefer; in this case it will be tennis. The ballot illuminates the option with a light signal, and then on the screen of the machine I can verify that the option that appears matches the one I selected (in this case, tennis). I press the "vote" button and the machine generates a paper trail that lets me confirm that the information matches my original selection. Then I fold the paper trail and deposit it into the ballot box. In fact, this paper trail is key to the whole auditability process of the voting machine, because once the voting ends and the polls are closed, the machine prints out a report of all votes cast. Those results are automatically and electronically transmitted to a central tabulation server that consolidates all votes from all the different machines across the country, and then produces a winner. These reports are placed on the Internet so that all citizens can confirm that the counts produced by each of the voting machines in the country matches the online published results.

There is an additional audit process which is critical, once the polls are closed; this process enables people in the polling station to confirm the accuracy of the voting machine. During the process the authorities of the polling station, open the ballot box and count the votes one by one, and compare those votes registered with the reports that the voting machine printed when the polling station closed. There has to be 100% accurate match of those counts.

Smartmatic's electronic voting system has been used in elections in five continents. More than 2.5 billion votes have been recorded using our technology, and these results have never shown a single discrepancy between the physical receipt of the vote and the counts produced by machines. Our technology is 100% auditable from start to the end. Accuracy has been attested by different international election observation missions around the world, such as the Carter Center, the European Union, the Organization of American States and the United Nations.

Видео The most advanced electronic voting system in the world канала Smartmatic