President Duque acknowledged that there were errors during the votes for Congress, but not a fraud

Following controversies that arose after the election of the new Colombian congress, President Iván Duque officially ruled on allegations of alleged fraud at the voting stations with which the Pact Histórico coalition won nearly 390,000 additional votes, but which also resulted in former President Alvaro Uribe, leader of the Democratic Center, threatened not to recognize the elections.

In an interview he gave to the newspaper El Tiempo, the president pointed out that there were protruding errors, but never a fraud.

“The National Government has never talked about fraud, the Government has always said that we have a reliable electoral system, we obviously regret this situation that arose with these protruding errors and we hope that they will be resolved and that is why the measures we have recommended in terms of training, auditing. And that all challenges can be clarified in the scrutiny stages is the way to proceed,” he said in the Bogotá newspaper.

Duque also pointed out that everything that happened was a lesson from which the electoral system must learn so that the same thing would not happen in the next elections.

“It is necessary to take corrective measures immediately. I think it is urgent that the National Electoral Council (CNE) and the Registry Office be able to learn from the circumstances that have occurred and that action be taken,” he added.

He indicated that such measures should include the review of the random process for selecting juries, as well as their training. He also indicated that it is expected that the errors that were made in the transmission of the pre-count could be verified and that the controversial E-14 forms and the others that are used would be collated in real time, so that there are no discrepancies.

“In addition, I think it is very important that a thorough audit of everything that is the counting software be carried out so that there is no doubt about the technological suitability that is applied by the CNE,” said Duque.

He concluded by stating that what was mentioned above was what caused the controversies, attacks and doubts, so it was necessary to address them.

This is how they detected the shortcomings in the ballots

Verification of the count in several tables was requested by the Historical Pact coalition, which through its oversight managed to find a number of votes that secured it several seats in the Congress of the Republic.

Evidence of anomalies and failures in the knowledge of votes was given thanks to a tool developed by a team established by this political group, which managed to detect irregularities in 29,000 tables in the country.

In Noticias Uno, it was possible to know in detail what was the composition of this team and the working model that was implemented, to detect the failures that violated its political participation, although the controversy arose because it was the Historical Pact that recovered the most seats, all because it was apparently the only party that was the most beyond electoral oversight, since they set up a digital tool that allowed them to know in real time different failures in the counting, which directly affected them.

The first warning that this tool gave was the growth of voters in relation to the number they commonly voted in a polling place, since it was considered quite suspicious that in some places where abstention was noticeable in previous elections, from one moment to another the numbers would change.

The excess of votes for a specific candidate or party was constituted as the second warning factor in the face of a controversial management in the counting, since a possible manipulation or nullity of votes was foreseen for a particular coalition.

Finally, the last and most important warning sign had to see when there was no vote in favor of the Historical Pact at the polls, this was one of the anomalies that this party immediately denounced before the competent authorities and the general public.

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