Inclusion of deceased, foreigners registered without justification, an inappropriate computer system, as well as a lack of control in the registration of political organizations are some of the findings.
The Comptroller General of the State (CGE) forwarded to the National Electoral Council (CNE) the results of the special examination of the processes and computer systems applied for the creation of the electoral registry and its purification, vote counting and validation of signatures, for the registration and legalization of political parties and movements, of the 2019 Sectional Elections.
The inclusion of deceased persons entitled to vote, foreigners registered without justification and others who were eliminated from the register without support are part of the findings made by the Comptroller’s Office.
During the audited period (September 1, 2018 to February 28, 2020) it was concluded that a computer system was not implemented for the creation and automatic cleaning of the Electoral Registry that incorporates application controls and validation of information between various sources. of data. This in order to ensure the integrity and security of the information of national and foreign citizens.
The examination refers to another report of the control entity presented on May 28, 2020, which analyzes the period from March 1, 2014 to July 31, 2019. This also determined that there was a lack of procedures for detection errors and correction of civil registration data, identification and identification. Situation that caused the information of the General Directorate of the Civil Registry not to be refined, so that the Electoral Registry used in the 2019 elections presented errors.
The report of the Civil Registry Office delivered to the CNE does not contain the dates of death of 1,689 people who maintained a different identification status code from that of deceased.
Added to them is another group that has inconsistencies in their records of the deceased, reaching a total of 1,699 deceased persons who were authorized to vote and of whom 14 were registered as voters.
The Comptroller’s Office questioned this fact, despite the fact that technicians from both the CNE and the Civil Registry were in charge of validating the information and did not observe these records.
According to the control body, this situation arose because the National Director of the Electoral Registry (E); the National Director of Electoral Systems and Informatics; and CNE officials did not apply validation controls in the process of creating the Electoral Registry to detect inconsistencies in people’s information. For the cases evidenced, they did not coordinate their purging and updating with the Civil Registry, which caused a lack of integrity and reliability in the information of the citizens who made up the electoral roll.
It was also determined that until February 28, 2020, the National Electoral Council did not have a registration system for foreigners for their subsequent inclusion in the Electoral Registry and even warned that some people had been eliminated from said registry without legal support. .
20,833 people were included, of these 2,224 did not meet the requirement of 5 years of residence in the country.
1,714 foreigners with their visa canceled were also recorded in the Electoral Registry; as well as 3,630 foreigners who did not meet the legal requirements to access the right to vote.
The Comptroller’s Office stated, in its examination, that 3,210 people with an enforceable sentence were included in the Registry and that 792 people were excluded, whose political rights had been restored.
In addition, it was specified that there was an absence of automatic mechanisms for the control and supervision of the vote counting process and issuance of tally sheets; and, the zeroing of the STPR Results Transmission and Publication System Database. Aspects that caused the integrity of the databases not to be ensured and therefore the principles of transparency and security of the electoral process of March 24, 2019 are not guaranteed; allowing anomalies to occur.
Of the total of 248,835 minutes of the election process, 20,451 presented the condition of «numerical inconsistency», so there was a recount of votes.
The Alternate Data Center hired by the CNE, in the city of Guayaquil, in which the web server was hosted for the publication of results, presented failures in the processing capacity and the replication of the images of the foreign minutes was suspended , and the transfer of these minutes must be carried out manually.
The audit determined that the CNE did not have a technological solution that guarantees the registration, control and compliance of the processes related to the registration of political organizations.
The entity used a program acquired in 2012, which allowed the registration of ID cards with 9 and 12 digits, people who died on the date of presentation of signatures, those under 16 years of age, signatures of active personnel of the Police and Armed Forces, as well as of repeated adherents in their movements and in different political organizations.
With this criterion, the Comptroller’s Office recommended the CNE to review, in due course, each of these findings.
On August 18, the electoral roll for the 2021 elections closed with 13,099,150 voters.
Source: Office of the Comptroller General of the State, social networks
Be the first to comment