ISLAMABAD: A leading elections technology company introduced on Thursday products and services aimed at holding transparent and speedy polls in order to what it said get rid of rigging during the electoral process. London-based company Smartmatic, which has automated 3,500 elections and counted some 3.5 billion votes across the world, offered its technology to all stakeholders in the country for making all kinds of elections transparent.

The event was attended by lawmakers and political leaders besides representatives of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), non-government organisations and international agencies seeking to help introduce the technology in Pakistan.

In his opening remarks, British Deputy High Commissioner John Tucknott said that populous countries like Pakistan could benefit greatly from the technology and expertise on offer.

Cesar Flores, president of the Smartmatic Asia Pacific, discussed the benefits of ‘Biometric Voter Authentication and Electronic Voting’ system and demonstrated the use of the technology at polling stations.

“Transparent, fast and 100 per cent auditable elections; we are very pleased to share Smartmatic’s global experience with the audience and demonstrate our technology solutions to give the decision makers a solid basis for any further election automation plans,” Mr Flores said.

To illustrate the high efficiency of his systems, he gave a demonstration of the Smartmatic Automated Elections System (SAES) 888 voting machine as well as the handheld biometric authentication device which was used in the last elections in Venezuela.

Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf lawmaker Dr Arif Alvi, MQM’s Farooq Sattar and legislators from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa praised the technology, with the PTI showing keen interest in introducing the technology in the local government elections in KP to be held in April.

Mr Flores cited what he called his company’s other success stories, including automated elections in the Philippines and Ecuador, where 100 per cent of the results were released within an hour of the end of polling.

Experts said the biometric voter authentication became a hot topic for election commissions across the world after Venezuela made history by having 100 per cent of its voters biometrically authenticated in its 2012 presidential elections.

They said the technology provided by Smartmatic marked the first time that a nationwide election became automated at every step, from authentication to the broadcast of official results.

In 2010, the London-based company provided the technology to automate elections in the Philippines, which resulted in what observers said were the fastest, most accurate and most transparent polls in the Southeast Asian republic.