Smartmatic, the U.S.-registered electronic voting technology company, was founded in 2000 by Venezuelan experts Antonio Mugica, Roger Piña, and Alfredo Anzola. Fidel Castro advised Hugo Chávez to adopt electronic voting as a mechanism for securing long-term political power, leading to the development of the system in Venezuela. Chávez reportedly used it to win the 2004 election, and Smartmatic later supplied machines to countries including Bolivia and Argentina, where leftist victories and recur