LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In ten days, on February 18th Uganda’s General Elections will take place. The Electoral Commission of Uganda is partnering with Smartmatic, the world’s leading electronic voting technology company, to use a biometric voter authentication technology solution that validates the identity of voters prior to ballot casting.
Smartmatic has developed a central system to store and manage the biographic and biometric information of all registered voters. This system, which will be synchronized with Uganda’s National ID database, will perform quality control and integrity checks, and convert all the data into a format that can be used to process votes with accuracy and speed on Election Day.
“Voter identity management is a critical task in any election. Thanks to this partnership we will provide our field operators with the technology, services and know-how necessary to guarantee a successful transparent election. By validating the identity of each voter via biometrics with accuracy and speed, we will ensure the principle of ‘one voter – one vote’ in Uganda,” said Mr. Sam Rwakoojo, Secretary of the Uganda Electoral Commission.
Smartmatic will supply and configure all hardware and software to run the biometric voter verification platform with some 30,500 biometric devices being deployed across 30,000 polling stations. In addition, equipment warehousing, maintenance and dispatch, project management and election training is being provided to poll workers and election officials.
With biometric verification technology becoming more and more widely used around the world, Uganda is one of many nations taking steps to combat one of the most pervasive forms of election fraud – voter impersonation.
“We welcome opportunities like this to put our experience and the work of our Research & Development labs into action. Biometrics is an extremely efficient tool to improve election transparency and facilitate polling station management. With just ten days to go until the elections, we are proud to be helping Uganda take this step forward,” said Dr. Khodr Akil, Smartmatic’s Sales Vice President for Africa.
About Smartmatic
Founded in the USA in 2000, Smartmatic's commitment to innovative technology and democracy has helped it to become the global leader of the electronic voting industry. Today, out of the eight countries pioneering election automation Smartmatic provides technology and services to six of them.