EOM warns of 'atypical behaviors' in vote counting in Colombia

After the elections last Sunday, March 13, the Electoral Observation Mission, MOE, carried out the observation of the process of counting votes and counting, this in order to assess whether there were atypical behaviors at the polling stations and, in the same way, complaints of alleged fraud. Following this analysis, the EOM revealed this Thursday, March 17, that it found multiple errors in the completion of the E-14 forms by the voting juries.

Alejandra Barrios, director of the EOM, explained that these errors “range from improper filling of the boxes on the forms and incorrect sums of the votes cast, inadequate capture of them in the pre-counting system, to cases of manipulation and alteration of the results deposited on the form by part of voting juries, which have even been publicly recognized”.

They added that one of the biggest mistakes being made is the “stubbornness”, as the director of the EOM described, of having three E-14 forms that have to be filled out by hand three times, so although they must be equal copies, they are not identical. They also insisted that there were difficulties generated with the design of the E-14 form, an error that was previously reported by the EOM to the Registrar, particularly on page number 10 of the 11 that make it up, in front of the location of the votes cast by the Historical Pact coalition.

The EOM detailed that the errors have been corrected in order to be able to give the official and definitive results soon. They also pointed out that they received information and complaints about these errors and alleged fraud at some tables through their platforms, they have taken various actions to clarify atypical behaviors.

One of the first actions carried out by the entity was the publication of the database containing the information on all E-14 forms; while they are also moving forward with the preparation of an analysis of the voting stations in which no votes were recorded by any political organization in the pre-counting system. The latter helps to identify the atypical behaviors reported and, precisely, the EOM found information that needs to be rectified.

They explained that in the case of the elections to the Senate of the Republic, the Historical Pact received a total vote of 2,331,263; however, it was the movement that, apparently, had the most tables with zero votes (28,466), that is, 25.6% of the tables. While, for example, the Conservative Party won a total of 2,217,296 votes, and had 3,768 tables with zero votes, or 3.4%.

“From the foregoing, there are clearly atypical behaviors in the number of tables that did not receive any vote by the Historical Pact coalition,” the official statement of the Electoral Observation Mission reads.

According to Barrios at the press conference, “it is an atypical behavior because it is expected that the higher the vote, fewer tables with zero votes will be presented. It's something we don't see being fulfilled.” However, she was emphatic that “we cannot point out that there was electoral fraud until the verification is over.”

With this information, the EOM asked the counting commissions, the National Electoral Council and the supervisory bodies to verify the information contained in the E-14s and to check it against the E-24s that have already been consolidated. They added that, if necessary, they should count the votes cast in the respective tables, in order to 3 ensure that all the votes cast by citizens are counted prior to the issuance of the final results.

For its part, the same organization indicated that it will carry out its own analysis of Forms E-14 and E-24, as soon as the ballots are completed; as well as a review of the traceability of the counting process through Forms E-26 and the General Acts of Counting. “In order to be able to carry out these actions, the EOM requires that as soon as the scrutiny is completed, and as quickly as the pre-count information was received, the Registrar must hand over all information from forms and databases where the information on forms E-14, E-24 and E-26 is processed. As well as the General Acts of Counting,” said the entity.

KEEP READING: