Smartmatic wins 10-year contract with auto election system

Peter Dinham
Wednesday, 01 February 2012 00:18

IT Industry - Deals

Global IT services and technology provider, Smartmatic, has sealed a 10-year contract with Belgium's election authority, FPS Interior to supply its innovative automated election system, starting with local elections that will take place in Belgium in October this year.

The advanced voting system created by Smartmatic and customised specifically to support Belgian and European regulations, involves the use of a touch-based electronic voting machine with 17-inch high resolution screen.

Smartmatic CEO, Antonio Mugica, said that, along with the Belgian authorities, the company had been working very hard to develop and offer a 'new and improved state-of-the-art electronic voting system that fully complies with all requirements, guaranteeing the most secure, reliable and auditable elections.'

According to Mugica, selecting Smartmatic as vendor by the Belgian authorities has been the result of a 'meticulous evaluation process' including a certification by PricewaterhouseCoopers that lasted for more than three years, and whose key milestone had been a public field test. 'The test was performed in cooperation with Belgium's Federal Government, Flanders Region and Brussels-Capital Region and allowed authorities to evaluate the system in real live conditions and receive direct feedback from voters and poll workers.'

Mugica said that, according to different surveys performed during the event, the big majority of participants manifested a highly positive perception of the system in terms of simplicity and ease of use.

Mugica also said that Smartmatic had successfully deployed its versatile electronic voting technology in multiple electoral processes in the Philippines, United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean, accurately registering and counting more than 1.5 billion audited votes.