The printers developed by Venezuelan-owned e-voting firm Smartmatic have been rejected this week in a vote-casting compliance test carried out by Brazil’s top electoral court TSE. The test concluded that Smartmatic’s “engineering model” did not comply with the bidding requirements. While the QR codes printed by the Smartmatic model were read correctly by electronic devices, the proportions of the codes did not meet the requirements, TSE said. Smartmatic had won with a 67.3mn real-bid (US$20.7mn) a public tender held in January by TSE to provide 30,000 printers for Brazil’s general elections in October. Those printers are expected to be integrated to the same number of voting machines to give voters a paper copy of their vote. … Meanwhile, Smartmatic is also most certainly out of the April elections in the country where it began its operations: Venezuela.
Last year, the company said that voter turnout in Venezuela’s controversial constituent assembly election – for which it provided voting machines and technologies – had been tampered with.
According to SmartmAtic, figures were manipulated and inflated by at least 1mn votes. The government of President Nicolás Maduro, which has a history of voting irregularities, denied the accusation.
In the aftermath of the turnout controversy, Smartmatic is aware that it will most likely not be able to provide services or technologies to Venezuela’s CNE election council again as long as the Maduro administration remains in power.
Full Article: E-voting firm Smartmatic could miss out on LatAm’s key election year – BNamericas.