Some 21.6 million voters to use biometric authentication

Some 762 Brazilian municipalities including 15 state capitals are using biometrics in combination with electronic voting machines in order to authenticate voters. In all, 21.6 million voters will use biometric authentication – this numbers accounts for 15% of the national voting population.

Under the new system, up to eight finger scanning attempts are made to authenticate each voter. Failures with this technology reached 4% in the 2010 general elections, which is considered a reasonable margin by the Electoral Court. Voters falling into this percentage are still allowed to proceed with voting as long as they provide their traditional IDs for manual authentication.

Despite increased security, the new procedures may lead to lengthier voting times. According to the Technology Department of the Superior Electoral Court, in the past general elections, when biometrics was used to identify 8.6 million voters, voting time increased by 20 seconds.

Court experts estimated that the improvements made and tests carried out since 2008 will mean an estimate 1 minute and 14 seconds to complete each vote.

In Brasília and the Federal District at large, where all voters will be identified by their fingerprints, expectations are the vote should be complete by 7 pm, two hours after the official time of last admission at polling stations.

Translated by Mayra Borges