New concern about election security, voting machines, and the rising influence of big money in politics have come together to birth an entirely modern industry of election technologies. Some of these new election technologies are more worrying than others but often there is big money to be made. Today we get an interesting look at a rising star in this election technology industry: Smartmatic.
The company Smartmatic is no stranger to controversy including in places as far flung as Venezuela, the Philippines, and in America where it is a target of scrutiny on both the left and right. Yet a recent article by Chris Burt on Biometric Update showed that the company has no signs of slowing down:
Smartmatic has announced deals with several high-profile clients in different geographic markets among its highlights in 2018, extending its global footprint. The Smartmatic-Cybernetica Centre of Excellence for Internet Voting (SCCEIV) was awarded a research grant under the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Programme, which it plans to use to advance its development of cryptographic techniques and protocols for data protection and to enable blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT) to run on voting platforms.
The company also joined the United States Department of Homeland Security’s Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council earlier this year. Smartmatic reached deals to provide elections technology to authorities in Denmark, the Philippines, Norway, Belgium, and Los Angeles County, as well as London, under a recently announced partnership with CGI.
You can get more about those recent announcements from the article at Biometric Update or visit Smartmatic’s website yourself. There, Smartmatic describes itself as follows:
We offer election commissions a comprehensive portfolio of solutions that increase the transparency, efficiency and integrity of elections while making voting more accessible. Since 2005, we have assisted election commissions in more than 307 US jurisdictions. Our technology has also been deployed on five continents.
Today, we are the undisputed leaders of the electronic voting industry, having helped hundreds of millions of voters cast over 3.7 billion ballots in government elections around the world. We are an approved US Department of Defense vendor and a founding member of the Department of Homeland Security Council for the Election Infrastructure Subsector.
What do you think about the company, its technologies, or its controversies? Add you comment below…
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