Submitted by Mike Grenville on Mon, 18 Dec 2006 15:41

During the recent Presidential Election in Venezuela nearly 8 million voters used SMS to find their polling station.

The SMS application to handle enquiries from the 16 million registered voters to know which was their voting center was provided by Ogangi Corporation and was used by 7.8 million voters. The Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE) also used SMS to tell with the 350,000 electoral witnesses where and when they should receive their training.

The system went live on 26th October with 52% of the messages coming from Movilnet customers, 40% Movistar and 8% from Digitel.

"On the day of the election on 3rd December we handled more than 1.3 million requests, and more than 150,000 MO per hour" said Luis Santos Ogangi Corporation Sales Director.

To use the service voters send in their personal ID (Cedula de Identidad), and receive an answer like this:

Name and Family Name, no es miembro de mesa y vota en ESC BAS RAFAEL ANTONIO GODOY de la parroquia DOMINGO PENALVER"

Electoral Witness received this message:

"Usted es miembro de mesa y debe capacitarse del 30 DE OCTUBRE AL 10 DE NOVIEMBRE en ESC BAS RAFAEL ANTONIO GODOY de la parroquia DOMINGO PEN"

The text in number was widely promoted by TV, broadcast radio and newspapers (see example below). "This is the first time SMS was used in an election in Venezuela with this level of Official Support and Promotion" said Santos. "The CNE is planing to keep the service operating permanently as a new comunication way in adition to their web site and freephone line" he said.