Smartmatic (also referred as Smartmatic Corp. or Smartmatic International), or Smartmatic SGO Group, is a British company that builds and implements electronic voting systems. The company also produces smart cities solutions (including public safety and public transport), identity management systems for civil registration and authentication products for government applications.
Smartmatic was founded in 2000 by Antonio Mugica, Alfredo José Anzola, and Roger Piñate and gained attention quickly after it was chosen to replace voting machines in Venezuela ahead of Hugo Chávez's 2004 reelection. The company grew by acquiring the much larger Sequoia Voting Systems in 2006 (though its stake in Sequoia was later divested), and today runs voting systems in many countries across the world.
Smartmatic has faced controversy for some of its actions in the Philippines, and during and after the 2020 United States presidential election and subsequent attempts to overturn the results, Smartmatic was the subject of numerous accusations of fraud and conspiracy theories by Donald Trump and his supporters. Smartmatic launched defamation lawsuits against some of its accusers, most notably Fox News, Mike Lindell, Newsmax, One America News Network, Sidney Powell, and Rudy Giuliani. Three current and former executives from Smartmatic have been charged in the US under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for a scheme that includes bribery.
History Founding In 1997, three engineers, Antonio Mugica, Alfredo José Anzola and Roger Piñate, began collaborating in a group while working at Panagroup Corp. in Caracas, Venezuela. Smartmatic was officially incorporated on 11 April 2000 in Delaware by Alfredo José Anzola."A Crucial Vote for Venezuela and a Company" New York Times. Retrieved 2017-01-19. Smartmatic then established its headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida, with seven employees. Following the 2000 United States presidential election and its hanging chad controversy in Florida, the group proposed to dedicate a system toward electoral functions. After receiving funds from private investors, the company then began to expand.
Expansion Smartmatic was a little-known firm with no experience in voting technology before it was chosen by the Venezuelan authorities to replace the country's elections machinery ahead of a contentious referendum that confirmed Hugo Chávez as president in August 2004. Before the election, Smartmatic was part of a consortium that included a software company partly owned by a Venezuelan government agency. In March 2005, with a windfall of some $120 million from its first three contracts with Venezuela, Smartmatic then bought the much larger and more established Sequoia Voting Systems, which by 2006 had voting equipment installed in 17 states and the District of Columbia. On 26 August 2005, Sequoia Voting Systems announced that Mr. Jack Blaine would serve in the dual role as President of Sequoia Voting Systems and President of Sequoia's parent company, Smartmatic.
Sale of Sequoia Voting Systems On 8 November 2007, Smartmatic announced that it was divesting ownership of the voting machine company Sequoia Voting Systems. However, in April 2008, Smartmatic still held a $2 million note from SVS Holdings, Inc., the management team which purchased Sequoia Voting Systems from Smartmatic, and at that time Sequoia's machines still used Smartmatic's intellectual property.
SGO Corporation
In 2014, Smartmatic's CEO Antonio Mugica and British Lord Mark Malloch-Brown announced the launching of the SGO Corporation Limited, a holding company based in London whose primary asset is the election technology and voting machine manufacturer. Lord Malloch-Brown became chairman of the board of directors of SGO since its foundation, while Antonio Mugica remained as CEO of the new venture. They were joined on SGO's board by Sir Nigel Knowles, Global CEO of DLA Piper, entrepreneur David Giampaolo and Roger Piñate, Smartmatic's COO and co-founder. Malloch-Brown stepped down as chair in December 2020.
The aim of SGO, according to its CEO was "to continue to make investments in its core business (election technology), but it is also set to roll out a series of new ventures based on biometrics, online identity verification, internet voting and citizen participation, e-governance and pollution control."
Elections The company was contracted in 2004 for the automation of electoral processes in Venezuela. Since 2004, its election technology has been used in local and national elections in Africa, Argentina, Belgium,"e-Democracy entrepreneur: 'Online voting will boom in coming years'" EurActive. Retrieved 2017-01-19. Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Ecuador, Italy Mexico, the Philippines, Singapore, the United Kingdom, the United States and Venezuela.
Africa Smartmatic has operated in Uganda, Zambia and is still deploying an identity management project in Sierra Leone. In 2010, Smartmatic has worked with the United Nations Development Programme and Zambian authorities to modernise the voter registry using biometric technology. In 2016, they maintained the voter registry ahead of the elections. Smartmatic also assisted the Electoral Commission of Uganda to modernise its election processes to increase the transparency of the 2016 general elections. The polling company supplied over 30,000 biometric machines across 28,010 polling stations, from the capital of Kampala to remote rural communities to verify the identity of over 15 million people.
Armenia During the 2017 Armenian parliamentary election, a voter authentication system was used for the first time. The identity of the voter was validated prior to voting using Voter Authentication Devices (VADs), which contained an electronic copy of the voter lists. The introduction of new technologies in the electoral process was strongly supported by the opposition and civil society. Smartmatic provided 4,000 Voter Authentication Devices to the UNDP project "Support to the Electoral Process in Armenia" (SEPA). It was funded by the EU, United States, Germany, United Kingdom, and the Government of Armenia.
According to final reports from The International Elections Observation Missions (IEOM) "The VADs functioned effectively and without significant issues." Observers reported the introduction of the VADs was welcomed by most IEOM interlocutors as a useful tool for building confidence in the integrity of Election Day proceedings. Observers also mentioned in the final report that the late introduction of the VADs could have led to a limited time for testing of equipment and training of operators, stating "Observers noted some problems with scanning of ID documents and fingerprints; however, this did not lead to significant disruptions of voting. IEOM observers noted 9 cases of voters attempting multiple voting that were captured by the VADs. The VADs provided the possibility for voters to be redirected, in case they were registered in another polling station in the same TEC, and this was observed in 55 polling stations."
Belgium Electronic voting in Belgium has been utilized since the 1991 Belgian general election. Belgium is one of the few European countries that use electronic voting. In 2012, Belgium approved a ten-year contract with Smartmatic to be the election technology supplier after an evaluation period of three years. In an evaluation by constitutional law researcher Carlos Vegas González, he stated that the printout ballot increased transparency and noted that Smartmatic's system was independently certified by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Brazil Smartmatic provided election technology services to Brazil's Superior Electoral Court (TSE) for the 2012 Brazilian municipal elections, 2014 Brazilian general election and 2016 Brazilian municipal elections cycles.
In October 2012, Smartmatic provided election support for data and voice communications to 16 states in Brazil, and the Federal District (FD) (deploying 1,300 Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) satellite devices), as well as support services to voting machines. These services implied hiring and training 14,000 technicians who worked at 480,000 polling stations. In 2014, the Brazilian electoral commission relied on an increased number of BGAN terminals, deployed by Smartmatic, to enable results transmission. BGAN satellite broadband voice and data service was used to connect voting stations to the nation's electronic voting system.
Estonia In 2014, Smartmatic and Cybernetica, the Estonian IT lab that built the original Internet voting system used in the country, co-founded the Centre of Excellence for Internet voting. The centre is working with the government of Estonia to advance Internet voting on a global scale.
Estonia is the only country to run Internet voting on a wide scale, where citizens can access services through their eID card. The e-voting system, the largest run by any European Union country, was first introduced in 2005 for local elections, and was subsequently used in the 2007, 2011 and 2015 parliamentary elections, with the proportion of voters using this voting method rising from 5.5 per cent to 24.3 per cent to 30.5 per cent respectively.
Some experts have warned that Estonia's online voting system might be vulnerable to hacking. In 2014, J. Alex Halderman, an associate professor at the University of Michigan, and his group, described as being "harshly critical of electronic voting systems around the world", reviewed Estonia's voting system. Halderman described the Estonian "i-voting" system as "pretty primitive by modern standards ... I got to observe the processes that they went through, and there were just—it was just quite sloppy throughout the whole time". A security analysis of the system by the University of Michigan and the Open Rights Group that was led by Halderman found that "the I-voting system has serious architectural limitations and procedural gaps that potentially jeopardize the integrity of elections". The analysis concluded:
The Estonian National Electoral Committee responded to the report, stating that the claims "were unsubstantiated and the described attacks infeasible." Before each election, the system is rebuilt from the ground up, and security testing including penetration testing and denial-of-service mitigation tests are carried out. In their statement, the Estonian National Electoral Committee says: "every aspect of online balloting procedures is fully documented, these procedures are rigorously audited, and video documenting all conducted procedures is posted online. In addition to opening every aspect of our balloting to observers, we have posted the source code of our voting software online. In the past decade, our online balloting has stood up to numerous reviews and security tests. We believe that online balloting allows us to achieve a level of security greater than what is possible with paper ballots".
Following the criticism, the number of Estonian e-voters at the 2015 Parliamentary Election was a record-breaking 176,491 (30.5% of votes cast).
Philippines 2008 Philippine regional elections On 11 August 2008, automated elections was implemented in the Philippines through the 2008 Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao general election with it overseen by the Carter Center. In the Maguindanao province, voters used Smartmatic's electronic voting machines, while voters in the other 5 provinces (Shariff Kabunsuan, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi) used manually marked ballots processed using OMR technology. The overall reaction of both the public and authorities was positive toward the process. Random audits performed by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) resulted in an accuracy rate over 99.5% in all elections from 2008 where Smartmatic equipment was utilized.