SOUTH PASADENA, Calif. -- Cogent Systems announced it has received a letter of intent for a $31.75 million follow-on order to add capabilities to its Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS) solution for the National Electoral Council (CNE) in Venezuela. The follow-on contract is for the joint development by CNE and Cogent of a completely paperless national voter registration and authentication system for an upgraded database of 24,000,000 voters. The system upgrade will include the configuration, distribution and operation of 12,000 stations nationwide as well as the hiring and training of 16,000 operators for the upcoming state and county elections scheduled for the third quarter of 2005.
Last year Cogent was awarded a contract to provide its AFIS solution for the Venezuelan national referendum, which took place on August 15, 2004, and a separate contract for the mayoral and regional elections in Venezuela on October 31, 2004. Cogent's AFIS solution was utilized to capture voters' fingerprints, create a database, and match the fingerprints to authenticate voters' identities and prevent duplicate registration.
"Cogent is dedicated to delivering state of the art technology and great value to the CNE, as it expands the database size and increases the capabilities of our AFIS system for the upcoming elections," commented Ming Hsieh, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cogent. "The development of a completely paperless system for the CNE significantly improves upon the speed and accuracy of the voting process."
