Automated voting takes hold in Venezuela | February 13, 2012

https://web.archive.org/web/20120504062804/http://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/automated-voting-takes-hold-in-venezuela/

Smartmatic and Green Bit selected to supply biometric enrollment solution to Mexico | April 11, 2012

https://web.archive.org/web/20120427010631/http://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/smartmatic-and-green-bit-selected-to-supply-biometric-enrollment-solution-to-mexico/

Belgium to feature a new automated voting system by Smartmatic in 15-year contract | January 30, 2012

https://web.archive.org/web/20120428043855/http://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/belgium-to-feature-a-new-automated-voting-system-by-smartmatic-in-15-year-contract/

With the participation of the Civic Foundation, the Radical Civic Union (Unión Cívica Radical UCR) is boosting the use of electronic voting in the upcoming elections in Mendoza, Argentina. | December 14, 2011

https://web.archive.org/web/20120428064721/http://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/the-ucr-will-ask-to-implement-electronic-voting-in-mendoza/

Smartmatic showcased its Identity Management Solution in Canberra, Australia | December 1, 2011

https://web.archive.org/web/20120428064707/http://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/smartmatic-showcased-its-identity-management-solution-in-canberra-australia/

=How to automate elections using Smartmatic e-counting systems for collection centers==

https://web.archive.org/web/20120428015832/http://www.smartmatic.info/how-to-automate-elections-using-smartmatic-e-counting-systems-for-collection-centers/

How Smartmatic will change the face of urban transit in Cartagena: the TransCaribe project

https://web.archive.org/web/20120317135524/http://www.smartmatic.info/how-smartmatic-will-change-the-face-of-urban-transit-in-cartagena-the-transcaribe-project/

>>11740980

UNASUR´s Electoral Mission: "Bolivia has South America´s best biometric registry"

https://web.archive.org/web/20120428093159/http://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/unasurs-electoral-mission-bolivia-has-south-americas-best-biometric-registry/

Bolívia: Cadastro Biométrico 2009

https://web.archive.org/web/20120226111457/http://www.smartmatic.com/portugues/caso-destudo/view/article/bolivia-biometric-registration-2009/

Smartmatic relocates worldwide headquarters to London

https://web.archive.org/web/20120504062715/http://www.smartmatic.org/view/article/smartmatic-relocates-worldwide-headquarters-to-london/

Smartmatic is broadening its international operations by opening two new branches in Taiwan and Panama, key regions that will foster the company's expansion plans in the global market of technological solutions, in the areas of elections, identity management and Smart Cities.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200807122632/https://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/smartmatic-makes-large-investments-in-new-research-and-development-centers/

During the California Primary Presidential Elections, Los Angeles County ran a pilot test of a product that can streamline election reports.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200919030242/https://smartmatic.org/en/view/article/smartmatic-pilots-solution-to-improve-accuracy-in-elections/

The multiple benefits offered by voting technology, and particularly biometric voter authentication, were the main topics of discussion during a forum held by Smartmatic along with their local partner Roseace, in Islamabad.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200919024015/https://smartmatic.org/en/view/article/smartmatic-promotes-biometric-voter-authentication-in-pakistan/

During the seminar titled “Voting Technologies as Key Components of Transparent Elections”, world leader in election automation, Smartmatic, promoted e-voting in Nepal last February 12.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201021190919/https://smartmatic.org/en/view/article/smartmatic-promotes-evoting-in-nepal/

Electronic voting is an irreversible tendency | Semana magazine and Smartmatic organize a forum on Electronic Voting

https://web.archive.org/web/20200803180021/https://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/electronic-voting-is-an-irreversible-tendency/

Electronic Voting in Colombia: An Interview with Eduardo Correia

https://web.archive.org/web/20200929013118/https://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/electronic-voting-in-colombia-an-interview-with-eduardo-correia/

Smartmatic has announced that Luis Vecchi joined its Board of Directives as President of Sales for Mercosur (including Ecuador) and Mexico. Vecchi, who has 20 years of experience in international sales, has the skills to help Smartmatic meet its expansion goals.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200807114140/https://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/smartmatic-appoints-luis-vecchi-as-president-for-mercosur-and-mexico/

>>11741038

>>11740980

Manila Standard Today: Buy the Smartmatic machines

https://web.archive.org/web/20200929133028/https://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/manila-standard-today-buy-the-smartmatic-machines/

Comelec: automation significantly improved the Philippine’s electoral system

https://web.archive.org/web/20160807142656/http://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/comelec-automation-significantly-improved-the-philippines-electoral-system/

Smartmatic, academics laud automated polls in Democracy Watch Forum

https://web.archive.org/web/20160807142638/http://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/smartmatic-academics-laud-automated-polls-in-democracy-watch-forum/

Automated polls in the Philippines 99.6% accurate according to random manual audit

https://web.archive.org/web/20200929013833/https://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/automated-polls-in-the-philippines-996-accurate-according-to-random-manual-audit/

Smartmatic successfully provides electoral services in Brazil

https://web.archive.org/web/20130325085817/http://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/smartmatic-successfully-provides-electoral-services-in-brazil/

What will elections be like in the future?

https://web.archive.org/web/20110927181856/http://www.smartmatic.org:80/en/view/article/what-will-elections-be-like-in-the-future/

The Carter Center, a global peace and health advocacy nongovernment organization based in Atlanta, Georgia, deployed a limited electoral observation mission to the 2010 Philippines' May 10 election as part of its Democratic Election Standards project, which includes addressing the challenges of observing electronic voting technologies as a core component.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200927160143/https://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/carter-center-lauds-1st-philippine-nation-wide-automated-election-with-smartmatics-technology/

Smartmatic receives 2011 U.S. Commerce Association Award in Identity Management

https://web.archive.org/web/20111003193145/http://www.smartmatic.org:80/en/view/article/smartmatic-receives-2011-us-commerce-association-award-in-identity-management/

Electronic voting, key for peaceful elections in Venezuela

https://web.archive.org/web/20130325064541/http://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/electronic-voting-key-for-peaceful-elections-in-venezuela/

>>11741038

>>11740980

>>11741094

Smartmatic & Ex-Miss Universe launch education campaign to promote transparency and public trust in elections Miss Universe 2008 Dayana Mendoza to visit Philippines as "Ambassador for Transparency"

https://web.archive.org/web/20200808011104/https://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/smartmatic-ex-miss-universe-launch-education-campaign-to-promote-transparency-and-public-trust-in/

Votes tallied & presidential winner known in record time in philippines election

https://web.archive.org/web/20200807115606/https://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/votes-tallied-presidential-winner-known-in-record-time-in-philippines-election/

The Manila Times: Philippines a world 'role model' on automation

https://web.archive.org/web/20200807120448/https://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/the-manila-times-philippines-a-world-role-model-on-automation/

Smartmatic International Sues Dominion Voting Systems for Licensing Breach and Improper Business

https://web.archive.org/web/20130325064859/http://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/smartmatic-international-sues-dominion-voting-systems-for-licensing-breach-and-improper-business-pra/

The U.S. Should Learn From Venezuela How to Hold Elections

https://web.archive.org/web/20130325072423/http://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/the-us-should-learn-from-venezuela-how-to-hold-elections/

Smartmatic to assist Haiti upgrading its Civil Registration and National ID

https://web.archive.org/web/20130325092943/http://www.smartmatic.org/en/view/article/smartmatic-to-assist-haiti-upgrading-its-civil-registration-and-national-id/

Opinion: Sequoia is for sale, buy who's buying it?

With scrutiny high, Smartmatic's e-vote subsidiary could be a tough sell

Anyone want to buy a slightly used voting-machine company? On behalf of a very used country?

In a surprise announcement late last month, Smartmatic, the company that owns a controlling interest in Sequoia Voting Systems, announced that it is withdrawing from a federally mandated investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. because it will now be selling Sequoia. If it can find a buyer, that is.

The low-key announcement made by the company on a Friday just before the long holiday weekend certainly leads one to suspect that there may be more to this story than Smartmatic cares to reveal, or than has been uncovered by federal investigators.

Sequoia Voting Systems President Jack A. Blaine sent a letter to customers late last week with the announcements. The Brad Blog has obtained Blaine's letter (download PDF), though we have been unable to find it posted on either the Sequoia or Smartmatic company Web sites. (The sites have a press release summarizing the announcements. The release is referenced in the letter.)

The paper trail

In March 2005, DeLaRue, the British money-printing giant, announced that it was selling its controlling interest in Sequoia Voting Systems to Smartmatic for $16 million. Smartmatic is a U.S. corporation, with its home office in Boca Raton, Fla., but the company's trail of ownership (as far as it can be ascertained) points to interests in the Netherlands. However, the officers of Smartmatic are of dual Venezuelan-Spanish citizenship and are rumored to have ties to the Chavez regime in Venezuela.

Smartmatic denies any ties to Chavez, as well as recent allegations that it paid some $91 million in bribes to Venezuelan officials to secure the contract to supply electronic voting machines for the country's recent presidential election. It also denies "allegations involving tax evasion, an excessive commission to a lobbyist in Caracas and alleged death threats by Smartmatic President Antonio Mugica," according to The Miami Herald. That's a lot of denial going on.

The rub

At the time of the sale of Sequoia to Smartmatic, the question was, "Why so cheap?" Why only $16 million for the sale of a company with nearly as much as that in assets and contracts, along with the potential for hundreds of millions of dollars in sales and contracts leading up to the 2006 election? Everyone knew there would be a feeding frenzy for voting machines as state and county officials felt the pressure to meet the new mandates of the Help America Vote Act and receive their piece of the $3.8 billion in free money available to them for "upgraded" voting equipment.

In fact, that feeding frenzy has brought in some $200 million for Smartmatic, along with future contracts for licensing, technical support, fees, ballot printing and other incidentals that will be worth at least $16 million every year for Sequoia (and its new owners) over the next several years.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120503003644/http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9007003/Opinion_Sequoia_is_for_sale_but_who_s_buying_?pageNumber=1

>>11741226

The Financial Times covered the announcement, as did The Washington Post and a number of other outlets. None of the early reports, however, addressed one of the first questions that would occur to any reasonable investor: What firm in its right mind would buy this company, given the extraordinary amount of legal liability these voting machine companies may well be facing?

As more flaws are shown in its systems, as additional whistleblowers step forward to reveal that the company was aware that its systems were insecure and inaccurate, and as new elections officials come into office and hope to cover their own asses, observers suspect that there will be lawsuits aplenty for all of the voting machine companies.

Despite Blaine's claim in his letter to customers last week ("We have already had some interest!" – yes, the exclamation point is his) that the firm is "confident there will be many potential buyers for our company," we wonder. We'd suggest that pervasive concern over such lawsuits may be one reason why we haven't heard much about the other big e-voting sell-off: the sale of Diebold's election division, which was rumored to be on the agenda after the former CEO Walden "Deliver Ohio's Electoral Votes to Bush" O'Dell was pushed out of the company and new CEO Tom Swidarski was installed.

The measure of 'success'

Managing public relations is a major part of the e-voting landscape, and Sequoia has already deployed company spokeswoman Michelle Shafer, who's had an excellent rate of success at imparting Sequoia's spin to news stories in the nation's more unquestioning media outlets. In fact, based on a check of the document properties of the letter (download PDF), we suspect she's the one who wrote this chestnut into Blaine's letter: Sequoia voting equipment was used successfully by hundreds of customers throughout 16 states and the District of Columbia during the November mid-term elections here in the U.S.

I guess it all depends on what your definition of "successful" is. It's true that nobody caught fire or actually died while using its systems this year, so perhaps its systems were "used successfully" in that sense.

On the other hand, there's the fact that it was disclosed that all Sequoia touch-screen systems allow voters to vote as many times as they might like merely by pressing the yellow button on the back of each machine; or that its systems can be easily, even accidentally hacked; or that votes tend to disappear on its machines; or that Sequoia refuses to stand behind the technology used in its own machines to transmit "results" to election headquarters; or that the company doesn't seem to want any actual independent security testing done on its systems – not to mention the failures on Sequoia touch-screen machines that led to New Mexico banning them completely. And then there's the 100,000 "errors" found on Sequoia systems in Palm Beach in 2004. … Well, there may be reason to believe its systems don't perform quite as "successfully" as the company would have folks believe.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120511033716/http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9007003/Opinion_Sequoia_is_for_sale_but_who_s_buying_?taxonomyId=17&pageNumber=2

U.S. Drops Inquiry of Voting Machine Firm

Venezuelan Parent Company, With Possible Ties to Chávez Government, Agrees to Sell

A federal investigation into possible ties between a U.S. maker of electronic voting machines and the Venezuelan government has ended after the company's Venezuelan owners announced they will sell it.

Smartmatic Corp. announced yesterday that it agreed to sell its subsidiary, Sequoia Voting Systems Inc., the third-largest supplier of voting equipment in the United States. Smartmatic, which was owned through a series of trusts by Venezuelan entrepreneurs, acquired the firm last year from a British company.

Concerns about the purchase arose this year in the media and in Congress, which prompted a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). The secretive interagency committee, which probes multinational deals with national security implications, received attention this year when it cleared the purchase of a major provider of U.S. port security by a Dubai-based company, a transaction that fell apart after questions were raised on Capitol Hill.

This time, the concerns focused on whether, through its complex corporate structure or former business arrangements, the company had benefited from relationships with the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, a foe of President Bush.

In addition, Smartmatic has provided the election technology used in Venezuelan elections that opposition groups have called into question.

International observers have cleared the elections, and Smartmatic says the Chávez government has no ownership in or control over the company.

In the November midterm elections, more than a dozen states and the District of Columbia used Sequoia technology.

"Given the current climate of the United States marketplace with so much public debate over foreign ownership of firms in an area that is viewed as critical U.S. infrastructure election technology we feel it is in both companies' best interests to move forward as separate entities with separate ownership," Antonio Mugica, Smartmatic chief executive officer, said in a statement.

Treasury Department spokeswoman Brookly McLaughlin told the Associated Press that CFIUS has allowed the companies to withdraw from the investigation. "CFIUS will closely monitor the sale process," she said.

Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), who in May raised questions about Smartmatic and Sequoia with the Treasury Department, said, "It seems the company could not overcome the cloud of doubt surrounding this deal – had they been able to, we would not be talking about a sale of Sequoia today."

https://web.archive.org/web/20080907051340/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/22/AR2006122201304.html