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. “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.
Full Article: El Salvador Election Officials Say Vote Counting ‘Error’ Fixed | News | teleSUR English.