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The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) of El Salvador recognized Wednesday there was an informatics “error” in the software in charge of counting the votes of last Sunday's legislative and municipal elections as one observer mission expressed concerns over the "complexity” of the voting system.
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“Given the irregularities related to the so-called informatics error, confirmed by the electoral authorities, investigations will begin in order to decide on the corresponding criminal or administrative responsibilities,” the General Prosecutor's office (FGR) declared in a press release.
The FGR said it would make sure the software results matched those of the tally sheets to guarantee transparency and legality in the electoral process. They also demanded that the TSE carefully look over the computerized vote counting.
Francisco Campo, Smartmatic's commercial director, said that a “human error” had caused the software to list the candidates in a disorganized way. As a result, the software had to process again 13,000 tally sheets, slightly changing the preliminary outcome.
“This caused a difference in the names' listing order and the allocation of preferences,” said Campo. “There's a fundamental thing we must have clear: the will of voters was never violated nor influenced. The voting outcome, the quantity of votes each party got was correctly assigned.”
That would mean that the votes were assigned to wrong candidates within the same party. This affected some candidates that were trying to get into the congress. Rodolfo Parker and other two candidates from the Democratic Christian Party (PDC), for example, will have a seat in congress after the preliminary results originally said they wouldn't.
Jacob Blickenov, spoksperson for the Solidarity with the People of El Salvador Committee (CISPES), a Washington-based organization that has observed every electoral process in El Salvador since the peace agreements in 1992, told teleSUR Wednesday the informatics error may cause some doubts among the voters, but hoped that the problem was corrected and trusted the official outcome to be accurate in the end.
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Meanwhile in a press release Tuesday CISPES pointed out the increasing "complexity" of the voting system as one of their major concerns. This was a result of the Supreme Court of Justice demands regarding the electoral process' constitutionality, which banned party members from taking part in the voting stations and modifying the original nature of the TSE, established during the peace accords.
More than 87 percent of the votes have been processed, giving the lead to right wing Arena with 765,542 votes, followed by the FMLN with 440,406.
The leftist ruling party, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), recognized their defeat and said they would change its directions to appeal to the public's will.
“The message expressed by the citizens towards the parties and the FMLN will be considered in a responsible and deep reflection that will meet the learned lessons to take decisions and correct what's necessary,” said Medardo Gonzalez, the FMLN's general secretary.
The official counting will continue until the weekend, according to TSE's magistrate Fernando Arguello.
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