Smartmatic Has a Long, Troubling, and Questionable History; Who will Have Access to the Server in Malawi Elections?

Smartmatic voting machines and the company itself have been rocked in various challenges and controversies, especially related to the integrity and transparency of elections in the USA, Philippines, Mozambique and other countries around the world.

On August 15, 2024, an article carried by Zero Day written by Kim Zetter published and seen by this paper, indicated that the machine has a long History of Controversy. The U.S. Justice Department charged three Smartmatic executives accused of paying bribes to win lucrative election contracts in the Philippines.

For instance, Roger Piñate, a Venezuelan citizen and president and co-founder of Smartmatic, a voting machine vendor founded in Boca Raton, Florida, was charged with two other current and former Smartmatic executives — Jorge Vasquez, a U.S. citizen and the company’s former vice president of hardware development, as well as Elie Moreno, a Venezuelan-Israeli who oversaw Smartmatic’s Philippine contracts.

According to U.S. prosecutors, the three conspired to pay at least $1 million in bribes to Juan Andres Bautista, former chair of the Philippine elections commission.

The bribes helped the company win contracts worth more than $180 million to supply about 90,000 voting machines and related election services to the Philippines for its 2016 national elections, authorities say.“No voter fraud has been alleged, and Smartmatic is not indicted,” the spokesman said. Many news stories covered the allegations and mentioned the false claims of election rigging against the company made here in the U.S. by supporters of former President Donald Trump over the 2020 presidential election.

Smartmatic had filed $2.7 billion defamation lawsuits against Fox News, other right-leaning news organizations and Trump supporters over those claims.

Witnesses claimed that votes in the race for vice president changed dramatically after Smartmatic altered the script, and the Philippine Justice Department charged the head of Smartmatic’s technical support team and two subordinates with making an unauthorized change to the script.

Already many people are casting doubts about the integrity and transparency of the machines. The Malawi Electoral Commission MEC must know that alleged corruption anywhere undermines public confidence in elections and democracy and a its a recipe for trouble after elections.

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