National Electoral Council will define whether there is a total count of votes

The counting of votes in the past elections to the Congress of the Republic has generated controversy over several inconsistencies and irregularities in the process. The national registrar Alexander Vega announced a national recount for the results of the Senate and, with that, the newspaper El Tiempo confirmed that during this week some members of the National Electoral Council (CNE) will meet to determine whether this process will take place in the country.

The registrar indicated that he made the decision “in order to reach the electoral truth”, taking into account the “countless inconsistencies of the E-14 forms to the Senate.” In the statement to the media, Vega assured that the irregularities arose due to failures in the completion of the forms in which electoral judges must record the number of votes cast at the ballot box by each of the registered candidates or parties.

“These are human factors, there is no bad faith, I presume,” the official said, ruling out that it is an electoral fraud. “In order to give peace of mind and transparency to the process, we are going to ask the National Electoral Council to authorize the counting of all the country's tables for the Senate corporation,” Vega said.

It should be recalled that the Colombian Congress is bicameral, composed of the Senate of the Republic and the House of Representatives. As explained by the official, the inconsistencies have occurred in the first, but not in the second.

The registrar's decision was joined by President Iván Duque, who convened a meeting to evaluate actions regarding the doubts raised. “In view of the Electoral Guarantees Commission that will take place tomorrow and in order to give citizens confidence in the transparency of the electoral process, it is advisable to consider, on the part of the National Electoral Council, to move forward with a general recount in the election to the senate,” the head of state wrote on his Twitter account.

Given this, the newspaper El Tiempo indicated that the members of the CNE “are consulting with constitutionalists and evaluating all the legal possibilities that exist to advance this issue.” In the event that the Council approves the request for the recount, the registrar argued that they have all the logistics ready to carry out the procedure. This decision would force judges in the departmental capitals and Bogotá to continue the scrutiny work.

Inconsistencies according to the Registrar

For Registrar Vega, the real problem in the inconsistencies between pre-counting and counting was presented on Form E-14. Although the same was used as in the previous elections, with the rules of the Electoral Code, there were changes in the proceedings by the juries.

From the Historical Pact, the coalition led by Gustavo Petro, questioned the location of its box on that form because it fell below a preferential list and, being a closed list, it occupied a limited space at the end of the document, which when taking the photograph to confirm the data, could generate a cut. However, Vega denied that it happened and pointed out that it is the same size as the others.

He added that judges who were trained in more than 80 per cent did not follow the instruction. It had been established that they should fill in the free cells of voting candidates with asterisks, but instead they filled in all the boxes, which made it difficult to visually identify the voting numbers and in turn affected, according to Vega, the transmission of results.

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