What products and services does Smartmatic offer?
Smartmatic provides end-to-end election technology and services to local, state, and national governments. Its portfolio covers every phase of the electoral cycle, from voter registration to results publication and post-election audits.
On the technology side, Smartmatic’s solutions include biometric voter registration and authentication systems; electronic voting machines; ballot marking devices, which print a paper record of each voter’s selection; e-counting systems that scan and tabulate paper ballots electronically; results processing and transmission systems for paper-ballot elections; e-Poll books for voter check-in at polling stations; internet voting platforms for remote voting; and election management platforms that allow authorities to configure systems, monitor operations, publish results, and train staff.
Cybersecurity is built into every product. Smartmatic’s systems use multi-layered protection based on defense-in-depth, least privilege, segregation of duties, zero trust, and end-to-end transparency and auditability.
The company is an approved U.S. Department of Defense vendor and was a founding member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Election Infrastructure Subsector Council.
On the services side, Smartmatic operates under an Elections-as-a-Service model that covers project management and consulting, supply chain and logistics, warehouse operations, ballot printing and distribution, data center design and operation, field deployment and technical support, staff recruitment and training, call center support, voter education, and results transmission. All support is delivered in-country, with local staff and local partners.
Since its first election in 2004, Smartmatic has deployed more than 2 million election devices, processed more than 6.5 billion votes, and served 930,000 polling stations across 39 countries, with zero security breaches across all deployments.
Where are Smartmatic voting machines manufactured?
Smartmatic works with manufacturing partners in several countries and can produce election devices in locations specified by each procurement process. In recent years, the company has worked with hardware manufacturers in Taiwan, one of the world’s leading centers for advanced electronics manufacturing. Taiwan accounts for approximately 92% of global manufacturing capacity for the most advanced semiconductors, which are used in smartphones, artificial intelligence systems, critical infrastructure, and advanced defense equipment.
Has anybody audited Smartmatic’s technology?
Yes. Smartmatic’s systems are among the most tested and externally validated in the election technology industry.
In the United States, Smartmatic’s technology has been certified by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the State of California, Pro V&V, and SLI Global. PricewaterhouseCoopers has conducted independent reviews of Smartmatic’s systems.
Smartmatic’s solutions comply with leading international cybersecurity standards, including NIST FIPS 140-2, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, the UK National Cyber Security Centre guidelines, OWASP, CIS benchmarks, and NATO TEMPEST SDIP-27 specifications. The company’s cybersecurity framework was developed in collaboration with the Georgia Tech Research Institute at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
At the international level, Smartmatic’s technology has been validated by the Carter Center, the Organization of American States, the European Union, and the United Nations.
Other respected organizations, including the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the International Republican Institute (IRI), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), have observed elections conducted using Smartmatic technology and have consistently found the results to be accurate and the processes to be reliable. In 2005, the Carter Center and the European Union identified Smartmatic as one of the most secure, reliable, and auditable election technologies in the world. In 2012, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter called Smartmatic’s solution “the best voting system in the world.”
Beyond independent technical certification, election management bodies around the world conduct their own audit and validation processes as part of their legal obligations. These include pre-election testing and logic-and-accuracy checks, parallel vote tabulation exercises, random manual audits of paper records against electronic counts, source code reviews by accredited technical teams, and post-election verification by party representatives and civil society observers. Smartmatic complies fully with each jurisdiction’s requirements.
Across every jurisdiction where Smartmatic has operated, election commission audits have consistently confirmed that its systems produced accurate and verifiable results.
How does Smartmatic compare to its competitors?
The election technology industry includes a small number of established providers: ES&S, Dominion Voting Systems, Hart InterCivic, Indra/Minsait, and Miru Systems, among others. Their scale, geographic reach, and product capabilities differ substantially.
ES&S, Dominion, and Hart operate primarily in the United States, serving counties and jurisdictions across the country. Indra has a presence in Europe and Latin America. Smartmatic is the only provider in the industry with a deployment record spanning approximately 40 countries across five continents. It has served more than 350 million voters and processed more than 6.5 billion votes, more than any other election technology company in the world.
The breadth of Smartmatic’s technology stack also sets it apart. According to a March 2026 internal competitive analysis based on public sources, Smartmatic is the only company in the industry that offers full coverage across every phase of the election lifecycle: voter registration, biometric identity systems, voter authentication, ballot design and management, voting hardware, vote tabulation, results transmission, results management, election logistics, and end-to-end audit tools. U.S.-focused competitors primarily cover the voting and counting layers and do not offer results transmission or election logistics services.
Smartmatic is also the only provider to offer end-to-end cryptographic audit capability and biometric voter verification at national scale.
Smartmatic’s technologies and operations are supported by an extensive portfolio of certifications, validations, approvals, standards, and compliance frameworks. These include U.S. Election Assistance Commission certification to VVSG 2.0; cryptographic modules validated to FIPS 140-2; product testing and approvals under the TEMPEST SDIP-27 standard; conformance with WCAG 2.0 accessibility requirements; compliance with the GDPR; and certifications to ISO 9001:2015; ISO 14001:2015; and ISO 27001:2022. Smartmatic technologies have also received certifications or approvals from security authorities in Belgium, Estonia, Germany, and Mexico.
Smartmatic’s security practices include making source code available for review by customers and independent testing laboratories, undergoing audits by firms including PwC, Deloitte, and EY, applying zero-trust security principles, and conducting comprehensive third-party penetration testing.
Has Smartmatic’s technology ever been hacked or experienced a security breach?
No. Since Smartmatic’s first election deployment in 2004, its technology has processed more than 6.5 billion votes across 39 countries without a single security breach. This record spans more than two decades of national and subnational elections on five continents, including jurisdictions with demanding certification requirements such as Los Angeles County, Belgium, and Estonia.
Smartmatic’s systems are designed on a defense-in-depth model, meaning multiple independent layers of protection must each fail for a breach to occur. Physical and digital safeguards are combined: devices use encryption, digital signatures, and security fragmentation. Access is governed by least-privilege and zero-trust principles, meaning every user and system component is authenticated and validated continuously, and no single actor has unrestricted access to any critical process.
Does Smartmatic use paper records, and can results be manually verified?
Yes. Smartmatic’s systems are designed to produce verifiable paper records at every stage where votes are cast electronically. The 2004 Venezuelan recall referendum, Smartmatic’s first national deployment, was the first election in history in which every voter received a paper record of their electronic vote. That model has since become the international standard.
Smartmatic’s ballot marking devices and electronic voting machines produce a human-readable paper ballot that voters can review before their vote is cast. That paper record serves as the official audit document and can be hand-counted independently of the electronic tally.
What security standards does Smartmatic’s technology meet?
In the United States, Smartmatic’s systems have been tested and audited by federally accredited Voting System Test Laboratories, including Pro V&V and SLI Compliance, certified by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and approved for use by the State of California. Smartmatic is also an approved U.S. Department of Defense vendor.
Internationally, Smartmatic’s systems comply with NIST FIPS 140-2 for cryptographic modules, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, the UK National Cyber Security Centre guidelines, OWASP application security standards, CIS benchmarks, and NATO TEMPEST SDIP-27 specifications for electromagnetic shielding. The company’s cybersecurity framework was developed in collaboration with the Georgia Tech Research Institute at the Georgia Institute of Technology and is based on five principles: defense-in-depth, least privilege, segregation of duties, zero trust, and transparency.
What is Smartmatic’s technology used for in Los Angeles County?
In 2018, Los Angeles County selected Smartmatic to help design and implement the Voting Solutions for All People initiative, a complete modernization of the county’s election infrastructure. Los Angeles County is the largest voting jurisdiction in the United States, with more than 5.4 million registered voters, a geographic area larger than most U.S. states, and legally mandated accessibility and multilingual requirements that few jurisdictions match.
Smartmatic engineered and manufactured the county’s ballot marking devices, which allow voters to make their selections on a touchscreen that then prints a human-readable paper ballot. Smartmatic also built the backend software for managing the devices, led the California certification process, and built the VSAP operations center. Depending on the services contracted by the county for a particular election, Smartmatic may also operate the VSAP operations center and support logistics and setup for vote centers across the county. The system does not count, tabulate, or store votes. Counting is performed by the county using a separate system.
The system debuted in the March 2020 presidential primary.
During that first election, an exit poll conducted by Loyola Marymount University found that more than 85 percent of voters rated their overall experience as excellent or good.
No issues have been raised regarding the security, reliability, or auditability of results. Smartmatic continued to support Los Angeles County elections through the 2024 presidential election and the 2026 midterm elections.
How does Smartmatic protect the secrecy of the ballot?
Ballot secrecy is protected through a combination of technical design choices and operational protocols. Votes are encrypted individually from the moment they are cast. Smartmatic’s systems apply end-to-end encryption and digital signatures, ensuring that the contents of a ballot cannot be read by any person or system with access to only part of the process. The encryption architecture is designed so that no single operator, administrator, or system component can link a specific voter to a specific vote.
For internet voting through Smartmatic’s remote voting platform, voters receive a unique verification code after casting their ballot that allows them to confirm their vote was correctly deposited, without revealing how they voted. This end-to-end verifiability is a design property that allows independent auditors to check the integrity of results without exposing individual ballots.
Physically, paper records produced by Smartmatic’s machines display vote choices in a format that voters can verify, but they are handled and stored under chain-of-custody procedures established by the election authority. Smartmatic’s systems also apply the principle of segregation of duties: the staff responsible for configuring systems, managing voting day operations, and auditing results are kept organizationally separate, reducing the risk of any single actor compromising secrecy or integrity.
Who certifies Smartmatic’s systems before they are used in an election?
Certification requirements vary by jurisdiction, and Smartmatic’s systems have been certified through multiple independent processes around the world.
In the United States, election technology must be tested by accredited Voting System Test Laboratories before it can be submitted to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) for federal certification. Smartmatic's systems have been tested by Pro V&V and SLI Compliance, two of the EAC's accredited laboratories, and have received EAC certification.
In 2026, Smartmatic's U.S. Voting Solution achieved certification to the latest Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) 2.0, meeting the nation's highest standards for voting system security, accessibility, and transparency.
For the Los Angeles County deployment, Smartmatic also completed the State of California's separate certification process, one of the most rigorous in the country.
Outside the United States, Smartmatic’s technology has been reviewed and validated by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Carter Center, the Organization of American States, the European Union, and the United Nations. Individual jurisdictions also conduct their own pre-election testing and auditing.