MOE asks the Registrar's Office to explain inconsistencies in vote counting

The Electoral Observation Mission (MOE) asked the National Civil Status Registry on Tuesday to provide clear and sufficient explanations regarding the inconsistencies that arose in the process of pre-counting the legislative elections of March 13. He also asked citizens and political organizations to continue to monitor the counting process with “special attention and peace of mind”.

The analysis of the pre-counting results and the development of the scrutiny carried out by the EOM showed a pattern of inconsistencies in the transmission of information. According to the organization, this situation affected “the results of the pre-count of the Congress of the Republic, both of the Senate and the House of Representatives”.

The review of the EOM in the Senate and House of Representatives

In the review for the Senate, the EOM evidenced a few weeks ago that, “the results of the pre-count were not consistent, neither with the information contained in the E-14 forms, nor with the processing of results that is being carried out in the counting committees.”

In fact, faced with the irregularities that arose with the Historical Pact, the director of the EOM, Alejandra Barrios, pointed out that there was “an atypical behavior” with these votes. The organization requested verification of 28,466 tables in which the coalition had no votes.

In front of the House of Representatives, the EOM carried out the same review exercise comparing the results of the pre-count with the information of the count with a 99.8% cut off on April 4, 2022. The entity found that 17 lists in the territorial district presented inconsistencies in 14 departments. The parties affected were: the Historical Pact, the New Liberalism, the Democratic Center, the Green Alliance, Citizens Force, the Centro Esperanza Coalition, among others.

“In following up on the counting process, the EOM has observed that many of these inconsistencies have been progressively corrected,” the oversight organization clarified in a press release. However, they emphasized that the final stages of this procedure are still pending completion due to the complaints of the various political organizations, which will be carried out by the National Electoral Council (CNE).

The position before the Registrar's Office

The EOM stated that the Registrar's explanation for these inconsistencies “has focused on pointing out errors in the completion of E-14 forms by voting juries”, as well as on problems with the design of the same document.

“However, the House of Representatives does not replicate the difficulty of reading the E-14 that was alleged for the Senate of the Republic due to the use of asterisks,” the organization explained. This is taking into account that in this case there was a better distribution of spaces due to the lower number of candidates per political organization.

For these findings, the EOM asked the Registrar's Office to provide comprehensive and precise explanations on the differences found between the content of the E-14 forms and the transmission of data from the pre-count of both chambers in Congress.

“The systematic errors evidenced have resulted in a loss of confidence on the part of citizens and political organizations, in the certainty of the development of electoral processes and their results,” the EOM concluded in the press release. In turn, he sees the situation as relevant due to the upcoming presidential elections that the country will experience.

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