May 6, 2002 – Santa Clara, CA – To help ensure fast and error-free ballot counting and election results, National Semiconductor Corp. and Unisys Corp. will provide Brazil with 52,000 state-of-the-art electronic voting machines for Brazil’s national elections this fall.

Powered by National’s Geode technology, the new voting machines feature an integrated screen and keyboard in a small 30 X 40 X 20 cm form factor. They will be deployed in ballot stations in every Brazilian city for the upcoming presidential, legislative, senatorial, and state’ gubernatorial elections in October 2002, National Semiconductor said.

Electronic voting machines have been used in Brazil since 1996.

The voting machine, running Microsoft’s Windows CE operating system, is easy to navigate, according to National. To vote for a candidate, voters only need to press a number on the keyboard that’s designated for a particular candidate. The candidate’s picture then pops up on the screen. Voters can confirm, reject, choose another candidate, or start the selection process again.

With the addition of the new machines, the country will have 405,000 voting machines nationwide, more than 80% of which are based on National’s Geode technology, National said.