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INSIDECOSTARICA.COM
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COSTA RICA NEWS
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Saturday 06
November 2010 |
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Costa
Rica
Counts
On RFID
to
Monitor
Municipal
Election
Ballots
Costa
Ricans
made
history
earlier
this
year, by
electing
their
first
female
president,
Laura
Chinchilla.
This
coming
December,
there
will be
another
first
associated
with
that
country's
municipal
elections.
Radio
frequency
identification
will be
used to
track
and
monitor
the
nylon
sacks in
which
paper
ballots
filled
out by
voters
are
delivered
from
each of
Costa
Rica's
polling
places
to a
central
ballot-counting
warehouse
located
in San
José.
The goal
is to
boost
the
speed
and
accuracy
of the
ballot-collection
process,
explains
Wilbert
De La
Hormoza,
the CEO
of Grupo
Diverscan,
the
systems
integrator
that
designed
and will
deploy
the RFID
system
for
Costa
Rica's
upcoming
district
elections,
which
will
take
place on
Dec. 5,
2010.
In past
elections,
the bags
were
checked
in
manually
as they
were
brought
into the
central
warehouse.
But this
process
is
tedious,
De La
Hormoza
says,
and can
result
in
mistakes.
It also
takes a
very
long
time,
since
the
bags,
once
they
begin
arriving
at the
central
warehouse
- at
around 6
pm on
election
day -
often
come in
droves,
causing
the
process
of
checking
them in
to get
backed
up.
Using a
battery-assisted
passive
(BAP)
EPC Gen
2 RFID
tag to
identify
each bag
as it
arrives
at the
warehouse,
he adds,
should
greatly
reduce
the
amount
of time
it takes
election
workers
to
process
the
bags. In
addition,
the same
type of
BAP tags
will be
attached
to each
election
worker's
identification
badge,
so that
every
courier
can be
accounted
for upon
entering
or
leaving
the
central
warehouse.
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