Registrar Alexander Vega acknowledged that the design of the form prevented the pre-counting from being simpler

Registrar Alexander Vega has been the target of criticism following the legislative elections that took place on March 13 in Colombia. This is due to the irregularities that have been evidenced and the huge difference that there was between the pre-count and the counting, where in the Senate there was a difference of about 1,026,000 votes. Citizens and different political fronts call for his resignation from office, while others hope that for the presidential elections to be held an ad hoc registrar will be appointed.

“What happened with the Registrar Office is another chapter in the destruction of citizens' trust, and when citizens do not trust what happens in elections, which is the ultimate act of democracy where they are expressing themselves to empower people who are going to lead society, we are in a big mess,” he said. Sergio Fajardo, Presidential candidate for the Centro Esperanza coalition.

Alexander Vega explained the errors that caused the lag in the votes and that today have him in the eye of the hurricane ahead of the presidential elections on May 29. He stated that the reports have already been sent to the Prosecutor's Office and the Attorney General's Office. He acknowledged that one of the errors that was submitted was in the design of the E-14 form.

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“On our part, we recognize that in the design of the form we should have made at least the box of the Historical Pact. Looking at this moment what it would have been if we had redesigned the E-14 form, perhaps the digitization or pre-counting would have been much simpler, but we would have a situation: we would also have badly filled out studs”, assured the national registrar in Noticias RCN.

Vega pointed out that another factor that was presented is that around 23,000 forms were poorly filled out by voting juries. “We found that, in 5,109 tables a possible malice is demonstrated, because in addition to filling out the forms in the wrong way, there were crosses out of the candidates' votes,” said Vega, who confirmed that these irregularities have already been made known to the Prosecutor and Prosecutor's Office.

On the other hand, the Office of the Attorney General of the Nation asserted that so far no formal complaints have been received from any voting jury for the alleged irregularities presented in the legislative elections last March. Researchers from this body say that it has not been possible to obtain the definitive information to carry out the required investigations.

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The Prosecutor's Office confirmed that the Registrar's Office sent a document reporting on these alleged irregularities by some juries. Now the agency wants to determine whether there was a premeditated action to favor a candidate or was it a human error. This could end in a criminal investigation.

The Electoral Observation Mission (EOM), through its director, Alejandra Barrios, responded to the national registrar, stating that “you cannot continue to focus solely on voting juries and the design of the E14, that does not explain the 6% difference between what was transmitted and actually scrutinized, when in others electoral processes we are talking about a difference of 0.5%, and much less explains why the impact on this omission is concentrated in a particular way in some of the political organizations for both the House and the Senate.”

In addition, the representative of the EOM said that it is important now, “to make an absolutely clear analysis that will allow us to reconstruct what happened and to correct for the presidential elections”.

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