“Colombian electoral authority calls for calm after preliminary election results”

Bogotá, June 21.- The Registrar of Colombia (electoral authority), Hernán Penagos, called for calm among the citizenry following the preliminary results of the presidential election runoff, which this Sunday saw far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella emerge as the winner with 12.9 million votes (49.65%) against the 12.6 million (48.70%) for leftist Iván Cepeda.

“The procedures and authorities for resolving claims are also provided by law. I want to invite the citizenry to have absolute peace of mind regarding the process that has been advancing,” said Penagos in Bogota, noting that the scrutiny begins today, which will possibly provide the definitive result of these tight elections this week.

The registrar highlighted that the vote count at the polling stations was carried out by nearly 860,000 poll workers in the presence of electoral witnesses from both campaigns, who also had access to a platform enabled by the National Electoral Council (CNE) to submit photographs of the tally sheets and cross-check the results reported by the Registrar’s Office, the organizer of the elections.

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In Colombia, the technical and legal procedure through which electoral authorities consolidate the official results of an election is known as scrutiny, and it is carried out by judges and notaries.

Unlike the pre-count, whose data is informative and preliminary in nature, the scrutiny has legal validity and allows for the verification of figures table by table, in addition to processing the claims and challenges provided for in electoral legislation.

Penagos explained that after the release of this Sunday’s results, the municipal scrutiny began, the first phase of the process.

At this stage, some 2,992 scrutiny commissions made up of nearly 9,000 judges and notaries are reviewing the electoral records and resolving any claims that the campaigns may present.

Once the municipal review concludes, the process will continue with the departmental scrutinies in charge of the CNE delegates and will end with the national scrutiny, in which the magistrates of that body will consolidate the results of the entire country and will make the official declaration of the president-elect.