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| Venezuela referendum to test latest electronic
voting technology |
Brian Ellsworth NYT
Tuesday, July 20, 2004 |
| CARACAS Most
Venezuelans see the coming referendum on the rule of President Hugo
Chávez as a chance to rebuild this divided nation. But Antonio
Mugica, chief executive of the networking company Smartmatic, sees a
phenomenal marketing opportunity for his company's voting
technology.
Smartmatic's voting machines will be used for the
first time in the Aug. 15 referendum that is likely to be one of
Venezuela's most hotly contested elections, making the company's
baptism by fire an all-or-nothing gamble that its first electoral
count will be flawless.
"If we can prove that this product
works under the most hostile of conditions, we can sell it anywhere
in the world," said Mugica, a 30-year-old Venezuelan electronics
engineer, in an interview in his downtown Caracas office. "That's
our marketing strategy."
The gamble is a big one. Smartmatic
will have to navigate the turbulent waters of Venezuela's political
struggle, which in just over two years has led to a failed attempt
at a coup d'etat and a two-month strike that briefly almost shut
down the crucial oil industry. Any operational glitches leading to
accusations of fraud or vote manipulation would scar the company's
reputation.
But if all goes well, Smartmatic could become a
rising star of the budding world of electronic voting, which in this
year's U.S. presidential elections will be used by an estimated 30
percent of those who vote, compared with 9 percent in 2000,
according to one elections expert.
Smartmatic expects its
sales to increase from less than $10 million in 2003 to more than
$100 million this year, and it expects steady growth if the coming
recall vote goes without a hitch.
Mugica and his childhood
friend Alfredo Anzola opened Smartmatic in Boca Raton, Florida, in
1999, intent on developing applications for the emerging field of
device networking, which allows electronic devices like cameras and
alarm systems to share information.
But after living through
the Palm Beach County ballot-counting uproar in the 2000
presidential elections, the two decided that the best application of
their networking platform was an electronic voting
system.
This year, Smartmatic sold 20,000 of its newly
designed SAES 3000 election machines and licenses for their software
to Venezuelan authorities for $63 million and won a $27-million
contract for service during the recall vote.
But this booming
business has not come easy. Opposition leaders attacked the
electoral authority's decision to hire a company with no electoral
experience for such a sensitive vote, complaining that the selection
process had not been open enough. The credibility of Smartmatic took
another hit in May when The Miami Herald reported that the
Venezuelan government owned a 28 percent stake in Smartmatic's
partner company Bizta, leading the opposition to suspect that the
government would rig the results. Bizta quickly bought out the
government's stake.
Smartmatic representatives said they
never expected the subject of impartiality to come up, indicating
that the company was inexperienced in managing its public image as
it was in counting votes.
Critics of electronic voting also
say that Smartmatic is providing an overengineered solution when a
manual count would work just as well.
"The Venezuelan
referendum has to be the simplest election I've ever heard of - yes
versus no," said Aviel Rubin, an associate professor of computer
science at Johns Hopkins University who has researched electronic
voting. "A paper ballot vote with a manual vote count would be the
most transparent way to hold this election."
The New York
Times
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