Registrar requests $3,277 million from the National Government for international audit

The National Registry of Civil Status sent a letter to the Ministry of Finance requesting resources of: $3,277,248,198 million for the contracting of an international audit on electoral processes and systems during 2022, as suggested by the National Electoral Council (CNE), due to the distrust that exists in the part of voters and political movements.

In the letter addressed to Claudia Marcela Numa, Director General of Budget for the Treasury portfolio, the Registrar's Office argued that the electoral authority required an international audit to provide “transparency and control of the electoral process”, through the evaluation and verification of the mechanisms and computer tools that are part of the process, since the past elections revealed multiple irregularities and questioned the legitimacy of the elections.

“For the foregoing, it is vitally important to have the resources for such contracting, to the extent that it allows the corporation to prevent, guide, assist and promote a democratic culture that strengthens political participation, citizen trust and institutional recognition within the framework of the Political System and Colombian Electoral,” said the head entity of registrar Alexander Vega.

The Registrar also pointed out that this audit seeks to evaluate the digital instruments that during the legislative elections, which took place on March 13, had problems with its technological platform, which caused the interruption of services to voters for much of the day, as well as on the processes linked to the counting at the auxiliary and national levels, which also presented serious disadvantages.

In this regard, he indicated that the inspection of the systems contributes to the exercise of preventive controls that prevent risks from occurring, while emphasizing that an audit prior to the presidential elections, to be carried out on May 29, has the potential to show weaknesses and errors to be corrected before these may cause failures.

Finally, he indicated that failures in computer systems that generate distrust in the results, as in the case of the past elections, have the potential to alter the credibility of the electoral authorities, because they are often associated with “irregular or fraudulent actions”, concluding that the fact that they occur allegations, on the basis of technical failures “regardless of the existence of malice or whether it is only human error, has the potential to cause serious damage to the social stability of the country and irreversible damage to the image of the electoral organization”.

“In order to carry out an inspection under the control of the CNE prior to or after the holding of the presidential elections, with the purpose of early detection of weaknesses and risks in software that were not timely detected in the legislative elections. Likewise, due to the importance of the software for the conduct of national scrutiny by the CNE, whose functional delivery was made on April 7, 2022, without a review of the source code of that system having been carried out until that time,” said the Registrar's Office.

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