Elections in Colombia: what is the difference between pre-counting and scrutiny and why were the votes lost

On Sunday, March 13, the legislative elections were held in Colombia that would define new Senators, Representatives and presidential candidates of the coalitions. Among the irregularities and anomalies that have occurred in the elections are software failures, errors in the juries, requests for pre-counting votes, among other things.

But one of the doubts that haunted and continues to haunt some voters is the difference between pre-counting and scrutiny. Since many thought that the final results of the elections were those released after the polling stations closed and began to count, notifying the Registrar's Office and national media.

The pre-counting process was explained by the former delegate registrar for electoral matters Alfonso Portela, as a purely informative exercise: “Pre-counting is a process of rapid information on the election results, the only effect it has is to report what happened at the voting station and has its genesis in the voting jury that processes a form, which is transmitted by telephone to a processing center and that is what we know as a pre-count and that is the results of the same Sunday.”

An important situation to clarify, since some Colombians were imagining that the result of the pre-count was the end. While the scrutiny does indicate the final consolidation of the results.

“Counting is the official result of the votes cast at each voting station, the judges of the Republic, notaries and registrars of public instruments who are appointed as tellers are responsible for formalizing the results, they are the ones who in the end give the official status to those results and to those votes cast on same Sunday. The big difference is that the pre-count is informative and the scrutiny is the official consolidation of the results,” the former delegate registrar for electoral matters Alfonso Portela stressed to Caracol Radio, explaining where the final result of the votes was from.

The same is highlighted by the website of the Reitraduría, mentioning that the pre-count is in fact only the first information provided to the entity and the media, but the results of the elections are given by the National Electoral Council and its counting commissions.

The result of these lessons has been widely questioned, especially the process of analyzing the votes of the E-14, which defined the Senate. The Electoral Observation mission commented: “Multiple inconsistencies in the filling of the E-14 forms by the juries who filled them out and that were disseminated through the pre-counting system. Inconsistencies ranging from improper filling of form boxes and incorrect sums of 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 voting juries, which have even been publicly recognized”, said the EOM.

Due to this possible case of fraud, several political sectors requested a recount, an initiative that was going to take the widely questioned environment National Registrar Alexander Vega, but decided to finally desist.

During the National Commission for the Coordination and Monitoring of Electoral Processes, which takes place this Tuesday at the request of the President of the Republic, the registrar general of the nation, Alexander Vega, pushed back the idea he had of requesting a general recount of the votes, as requested by some political sectors.

The idea had emerged this Monday and would be formally presented during this round of guarantees, “with the purpose of seeking a way out of this whole issue of legitimizing the result, which they were saying that fraud; fraud never existed”.

However, the registrar met 12 political communities, out of the 16 attending the meeting, who raised their voice against the count at the guarantee table.

One of the communities that flatly refused to recount was the Alternative Indigenous and Social Movement (MAIS), part of the Historical Pact. According to them, retelling would break the chain of custody and destabilize the process.

KEEP READING