VENEZUELA’S
ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES
Ever since President Hugo Chávez’s landslide victory in the
August 2004 referendum, sectors of Venezuela’s opposition and private media
have sought to cast doubt upon the fairness and transparency of the country’s
electronic voting system. It has been
suggested that the machines, which have been used in various Venezuelan
elections since the year 2000, could be used to violate voter privacy and
commit fraud. However, a careful look
at how Venezuela’s electoral system actually functions shows that these claims
are without substance and that elections in Venezuela are now among the fairest
and most secure in the world. Even some
of the Venezuelan government’s harshest critics have noted that the paper and
electronic trail produced by the machines guarantees Venezuelans a greater
degree of security in their electoral process than many citizens of the United
States. For instance, Florida Senator
Bill Nelson, in a recent hearing on Venezuela, remarked that “the State of
Florida is not even doing that with a paper trail. So maybe Venezuela will teach Florida something.”[1]
WHY ELECTRONIC MACHINES?
Venezuela’s 1998 Organic Law of Suffrage and
Political Participation, passed before President Chavez took office, requires that
elections be conducted with electronic voting machines. The law was part of a
larger effort to reduce the possibility of fraud through ballot-box stuffing
that was prevalent throughout generations of Venezuelan elections. The machines standardize the way Venezuelans
vote around the country, and the electronic tallies provide a faster and more
accurate vote count than manual methods.
The touch-screen machines are easy to use, and have the potential to
greatly reduce the time voters spend inside the voting center.
Since the year 2000 the
National Electoral Council (or CNE by its Spanish acronym) has progressively
perfected the electronic voting system by, for example, making it possible to
fully audit the computer software that is used as well as each step of the
electronic voting process. Thanks to
these mechanisms, every aspect of the Venezuelan voting system has been
thoroughly audited by electoral observers from Venezuela and from international
organizations like the Organization of American States and the European Union.
HOW THE MACHINES WORK
The SmartMatic technology utilizes a simple,
touch-screen system. The voter selects his preferred candidate by touching the
box with his candidate’s name and the associated party logo. Once the selection is made, a screen will
appear, again displaying the candidate’s name and requesting the voter to
confirm his selection. Once confirmed,
the machine prints a paper receipt, which the voter may check for accuracy
before depositing it in a locked ballot box.
Under an agreement between the CNE and participating political parties,
a full 55% of the paper receipts will be audited after the presidential vote to
ensure that their numbers match the electronic vote tallied.
The electronic data is encrypted and sent to the
National Counting Center for a nearly instantaneous vote tally. The official vote count is announced after
the paper audit has taken place.
The process outlined above was utilized in the 2005
National Assembly elections, which were observed and approved by international
observers from the Organization of American States (OAS) and the European
Union. In its final report on the 2005 elections, the OAS noted that voter privacy was respected
and that all Venezuelan’s right to a secret ballot was upheld.[2]
PROTECTIONS AGAINST FRAUD
Venezuelan elections authorities have invested in a unique
technology to ensure that no party can manipulate the computers in order to
affect the outcome of the vote. The
source code necessary to access the machines is split into four equal parts,
which are then divided among stakeholders, including a representative from the
CNE, opposition parties, pro-government coalitions and international observers.
In order for any change to the coding of the computers to be
implemented, each of these parties must be present and access the machines
simultaneously. For legitimate purposes, such as testing the machines and
auditing the vote, each party will have access to the computers, but any
unauthorized tampering is rendered impossible.
Just before the 2004 referendum, officials from the Carter
Center received a full presentation of the Smartmatic machines, and stated that
they were “very impressed with the presentation that we received, the security
measures that were shown to us, and the functioning of the machine that we
witnessed.”[3]
THUMBPRINT MACHINES
Venezuela has enlisted a separate technology to ensure that
voters do not cast multiple ballots at different polling stations. Computers at the entrance of polling
stations record the thumbprints of each voter as they enter. The thumbprints
are stored in a centralized database, and observers are automatically notified
if a voter has previously cast a ballot at another polling station. The thumbprint machines are separate from
the electronic voting stations, so that the database records only who
has participated in the election, not how an individual casts his vote.
OWNERSHIP OF SMARTMATIC
The Boca Raton, Florida based SmartMatic Company designed
and manufactured the machines used in Venezuela’s elections. Over the last two
years, opposition leaders have attempted to make the machines a source of
controversy by claiming that the Venezuelan government may secretly control the
company. But according to a recent
investigation by the Miami Herald, the Venezuelan nationals who own
SmartMatic, Antonio Mugica Rivero and Alfredo Anzola Jaumotte, have strong ties
to Venezuela’s opposition. As the Herald reports, “Anzola’s father,
Alfredo Anzola Mendez, was a prominent opposition member and a columnist in the
anti-Chavez Caracas newspaper Tal Cual. ‘I’m anti-Chavez by conviction,’
he said in a 2004 interview at his home in an exclusive Caracas neighborhood.”
CONCLUSION
Venezuela’s elections are among the most closely
scrutinized in the world, and its electronic voting apparatus among the most
sophisticated, accurate and transparent in any major democracy. As the December 3rd
elections draw near and polls continue to show that a majority of Venezuelans
intend to reelect President Chavez[4],
opposition voices have already begun reciting what the Miami Herald
describes as “nursery rhyme accusations”[5]
on the elections process. As world
attention is drawn to Venezuela’s elections, it is important to understand the
basic facts regarding how the electronic voting machines function and note,
like Senator Bill Nelson, that Florida and other parts of the world may have a
an opportunity to learn from Venezuela’s modern and transparent voting
process.