1. On December 8th 2013, Venezuela will hold municipal elections. 335 municipal mayors, the Caracas metropolitan mayor, the district mayor for Alto Apure, 1.680 nominal councilmen (elected individually by name), 69 indigenous representatives to the municipal councils (also elected by name), 686 list councilmen (elected by voting for a political party) and 20 district councilmen will be elected. In total, representatives for 2.792 offices are to be elected by the people.
2. As the company in charge of integrating the voting system as a whole, including its technology and electoral services, Smartmatic will deploy for the 10th time its automated platform in Venezuela. Every step is automated, from the preparation of the voting instruments, to the authentication of voters by means of biometric technology and the publication of results.
3. 16,088 candidates will participate in the election.
4. The preferences of 100% of the voters will be captured with precision by 39,427 of the National Electoral Council’s voting machines, which use Smartmatic technology. These will be deployed in 13,651 polling centers; 1,262 of these will be in rural areas, inhospitable and hard to reach locations.
5. 19,066,431 voters comprise the Electoral Registry, of which 18,952,292 are Venezuelans by birth and 215,124 are foreigners with over 10 years of residence in the country and enrolled in the registry. All of them are cleared to vote.
6. This election has a variety of voting options. The number of votes cast will vary according to the parish where each voter is enrolled to vote. In some municipalities, people will cast up to 12 votes.
7. 40 seconds is the average time to vote using the machine, including the 4 seconds it takes to print a voting voucher, but without counting the time needed for biometric authentication (via fingerprints). The time to go through the horseshoe (the shape in which polling centers are set up) is 2 minutes 57 seconds, according to the national voting simulation that took place on October 20th 2013.
8. Thirteen audits of Smartmatic’s automated voting platform are scheduled, meaning it is 100% auditable. All the tests are certified by the country’s political organizations.
9. 48,340 equipment items will be deployed, including voting machines (main and emergency), laptops, biometric authentication devices, etc… Additionally, 77,986 operators will work during the election; they will perform tasks such as adjusting the automated system, providing tech support, tallying the results, etc.
10. The technological platform provided by Smartmatic for this election has a series of strengths, among which we can highlight the following: a 100% auditability of the system, a possibility of independent vote recounts, exactness of the automated vote count, celerity in the delivery of official results, safeguarding of the secrecy of the vote, etc.
To know more about the municipal elections, visit our case study.