On October 29, a new election day which aims to renew mayors, governors, councilors and councillors. The deployment of the day entails a series of processes that require a gigantic technological and security infrastructurewhich is why currently the electoral process in the country involves 17 points in which technology is key.
According to the Karisma foundation, In Colombia, technology began to be incorporated into the electoral process more than 20 years ago, posing great challenges, among which stand out: recurring failures in technologies, suspicious contractors and others.
To talk about the electoral process, initially We must start by having clarity about the general step by step that an election day requires.. In a general process, prior to the elections, there are various tasks that must be carried out such as registration of parties and candidates, voter registration and voter identification. During the day, the vote is cast, the votes are counted at the table, the transmission and publication of the reports, the official counting and totalization, and of course, the publication of official results.
However, when talking about Colombia these steps are a little more extensive, so much so that in the year 2023 it is known that they are 17 technological points that will be executed for the elections and that they have key actors who are linked to the entire process such as: Indra, Disproel, Thomas Greg & Sons, the Registrar’s Office, JAHV McGregor SAS and the National Electoral Council.
What are the 17 technological points in the Colombian elections?
1. Voter Registration:
This process legally begins one year before the elections and concludes two months before them.. The entity in charge is the Registry Office and for this, the UT IDC 2023 was hired, a temporary union formed by the Thomas Greg & Sons business group.. Facial and fingerprint recognition technologies are linked to the process. According to Karisma, Although this process should have started in October 2022, the hiring for this step was carried out until December 23, 2022, that is, almost two months after the date. that stipulates the law.
2. Registry of significant groups of citizens:
This step in the process refers to the registration of political groups that do not legally constitute a political party, but that nominate a candidate or a list. Legally, registration must begin one year before the elections and must conclude one month before the start of candidate registration. The entity in question is the National Registry. Like the previous step, its process began almost two months after the date on which it should have been executed.
3. Registration of candidates:
During this step, the official nomination of a person for a popularly elected position with the endorsement of a party takes place. The process was to begin on June 29, 2023 and end on July 29 of the same year. Registration is carried out virtually through the Registry Office and has fingerprint and facial biometrics to verify the authenticity of citizens. For this step, the temporary Disrpoel was hired. According to Karisma, it is known that failures occurred for this process and it ended up being carried out in person to carry out the registration.
4. Signature review:
To carry out this process, The registry office carries out a review of signatures on the lists on which the candidates are supported. Here the lists are purified and it is determined which are true signatures and which are false. Various questions remain regarding this matter, since To date there is no information available on the success or failure of this process.
5. Registration and election of jurors:
The voting juries are a fundamental part of the electoral process because they are the ones who receive the ballot box and check that the voting process is not manipulated, they also carry out the vote counting and fill out the electoral forms. Said election process is carried out by the registry and carried out through a draw that runs the Disproel software. Regarding this step, an alert was issued through various media that revealed failures when executing the draw.
6. Communications plan assurance:
In this step, the equipment and infrastructure necessary for communication during the pre-counting of the votes are established. Within the contracts there are mobile plans with Instagram, WhatsApp and social networks for the communication of technical staff, delegates, registrars, assistants and others.
7. Voter info app:
This is an application that has been used by the Registry for some years. Its objective is to allow the access to information of interest to citizens such as where the voting station is, whether they are jurors or not, etc. It should be noted that, by 2022, the Infovotantes application and page collapsed due to high demand from citizens. By then, the entity stated that it was a cyberattack, a version that was later denied by the Prosecutor’s Office.
8. Registration and designation of witnesses:
This platform allows parties to send lists of people who will serve as electoral witnesses at voting stations.. The website allows you to generate the entry accreditation to identify yourself at the assigned location. This process is part of the Disproel contract.
9. Monitoring of voting stations:
This step refers to a mobile application of the Registry that aims to coordinate, control and monitor the progress and problems of the voting stations. According to Karisma, there is not much information about its operation and whether it will be used for the 2023 election day.
10. Voting and jury authentication:
This process aims to perform biometric fingerprint authentication. For this year, 30,000 biometric kits were contracted. However, several questions remain about their hiring, because if the system does not work, the person will still be allowed to vote. Additionally, delays have previously been reported as a result of the implementation of these systems.
11. Precount:
This step consists of the dissemination, consolidation and transmission of electoral results. It should be noted that although this step attracts the attention of citizens, It is not binding and what it seeks is to quickly provide results to generate confidence in citizens.. For this step, Disproel was hired and to guarantee its veracity, drills, press conferences, etc. are carried out.
12. Precount Disclosure:
This is when the pre-count is made public, This step is carried out with the dissemination of information bulletins by the Registry.
13. Disclosure of voting station information:
This step includes the digitization of the minutes and the general voter registry. This information is available on a control and monitoring platform to which you have access with a designated username and password.
14. E14 Disclosure:
In the process, the Registry Office discloses the E-14s, which are the forms where the voting juries count the results of their tables. Here each jury must make 3 copies to guarantee the veracity of the process. Citizens can consult this and verify how the count was carried out. This step has historically attracted ridicule because Strange manipulations and numbering have been revealed.
15. Territorial scrutiny:
Here the results are consolidated and at the end the winners are declared officially and binding. For the process, a mix is made between technology and manual, since the results of the E14 minutes are digitized and claims are made on paper. The scrutiny is carried out by the scrutiny commissions, although the program corresponds to the Registry Office.
16. National consolidation:
The scrutiny process in Colombia has two large phases: the territorial and the national. In the case of national scrutiny, The National Electoral Council is responsible through software that it purchased from the Spanish company INDRA. According to Karisma, it is not known how the territorial and national software will be connected.
17: Process support and data analysis:
This step refers to the entire technological infrastructure that contains the security of the system and the protection of information. In this regard, there is no information on the operation of the system or specific data on how the information is protected.