EUGENIO MARTINEZ
EL UNIVERSAL

The board of the National Electoral Council (CNE) waived provisionally the use of 10,139 biometric identification devices, or thumbprint ID registration system, that were to be used during the elections for parliament.

The decision was made when the parties to the Opposition United Alliance threatened to withdraw their candidates in the event of using such equipment.

CNE president Jorge Rodríguez clarified that the step does not mean acknowledgement of any vulnerability in the automatic voting used during the recall referendum on August 15th, 2004; local elections on October 31st, 2004, and municipal elections on August 7th, 2005.

"Fingerprint-reading machines were removed to favor participation," Rodríguez explained. CNE reasserts that vote secrecy was never endangered. "However, the parties made a request, according to which many voters were reluctant to cast their votes if such equipment were used."

With regard to the elections for president in 2006, Rodríguez answered that the equipment will "undoubtedly" be used again.

Audit at stake
On Wednesday, November 23rd, after the inspection of the source code, election specialists of opposition Primero Justicia party argued that the hard disk and removable memory of the equipment manufactured by Smartmatic store voting sequence.

However, the CNE president denied the fault, and claimed that the machines disarray and cover the sequence of votes. In his view, it is impossible to link the time of registration to the time of voting.

To date, CNE and Cogent System -manufacturer of the fingerprint-reading machines- have executed five agreements for USD 108 million in the aggregate.

Translated by Conchita Delgado