Venezuela’s e-voting described as the ‘best in the world’
South American nation, Venezuela’s e-voting system has been described as the best in the world.
On the other hand, Ghana has been described as having the best democratic process in Africa after success transfer of power from an incumbent government to an opposition party after general elections. The 2008 elections comes up as significant because the then opposition party the National Democratic Congress (NDC) won by a slim 400,000 votes.
Venezuela’s election process was declared the best in the world by former US President Jimmy Carter.
“As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world,” President Carter said during the kickoff of the Annual Conversations at the Carter Center series.
Carter based his opinion on the vast experience amassed by the institution observing and monitoring elections around the world, he praised the South American nation for having a voting system that makes verifying results an easy task.
Venezuela uses the technological solution developed by Smartmatic for voting. The e-voting technology has been used in Venezuela since 2004 and includes touch-screen voting machines that store votes electronically (encrypted and scrambled), and print a paper receipt for each vote.
“This characteristic, the full implementation of the VVPAT concept, gives the system a great advantage,” he said.
Unlike other countries that have earned renown in electronic voting, such as Brazil, India and the USA, Venezuela’s voting technology provided by multinational Smartmatic, offers several security mechanisms for audits and verification of results, which have been accredited by national and international observers including the Carter Center. In fact, Venezuela was the first country to deploy the technology on a national scale, in 2004, an election using touch screen voting machines with printed paper receipts, a press release issued by the company has said.
By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi