Venezuela. Next October, Venezuela will be a pioneer in the world in using biometrics on a national scale during its upcoming presidential elections, with the innovative Integrated Authentication System (UPS) developed by the company Smartmatic.
In its 2010 elections, Brazil conducted the first test with biometric ballot boxes in 60 cities, in which 1.2 of Brazil's 135.8 million voters placed their fingerprints to activate the voting machine and cast their votes.
In accordance with the four levels of maturity that an electronic voting system, election administration, automated totalization, automated ballot counting and complete electronic voting must observe, present in the Venezuelan system since 2004, with this system the last link for the shielding of the voter's vote is reached.
This will allow the activation of the voting session after the recognition of the fingerprint, in combination with the identification number.
During the first audit of the biometric system to be used in Venezuela, Carlos Quintero, director of Information Technology of the National Electoral Council, said that the electoral platform guarantees the secrecy of the vote and the principle of one voter = one vote. He pointed out that, within the electoral schedule, there will be new audits to verify the complete operation of the system in conjunction with the bank of footprints that will be stored in each machine.
