In the most recent elections, voter turnout in the country has improved slightly. In the first round of the 2018 presidential election, it was close to 53.38%, and in the second round, it reached 53.04%. In the 2019 local elections, turnout averaged 60.33%, depending on whether the election was for mayors, governors, municipal councils, or departmental assemblies.
However, voter abstention remains at approximately 40%, with particularly critical cases in rural, remote municipalities with high rates of violence. In urban areas, apathy toward politics has been on the rise. Consequently, the debate over the reforms needed to ensure access to the right to vote has gained significant traction.
In this context, the Registrar’s Office and the National Electoral Council, with the support of the national government, introduced a statutory bill establishing a new Electoral Code that aims to be modern and promising. Essentially, the proposal addresses procedural aspects such as voting methods, the creation of an electronic ID card, the implementation of a voter registry, the elimination of invalid votes, and an increase in the required representation of women on local government candidate lists (from 30% to 40%). Although the Registrar stated that the bill is limited to the electoral sphere, this last measure falls within the scope of political reform.
As things stand, electoral contests in the country would undergo profound changes, among which the following stand out:
- The election day would run from eight in the morning to five in the afternoon (it would be extended by one more hour).
- The manual and in-person voting that we know today remains. However, the new code contemplates a biometric system at all polling stations, the jurors would digitally fill out the records (today they do it manually) and would put their digital signature.
- The figure of mixed voting is one of the novelties brought by the project. This model involves attending polling stations and casting a vote on a machine. The latter prints a ballot with the vote that the voter must deposit in the ballot box.
- Digital or remote voting, exercised over the internet, whether through computers, tablets cell phones. According to the Registrar, this option has been requested by Colombians abroad for several years.
- Early voting, which generally involves voting before Election Day in front of public notaries.
The statutory bill must be discussed and voted on in its four readings during this legislative session, and it has an urgency message from the government (which implies a priority legislative process). Likewise, if approved, the new Electoral Code will be reviewed by the Constitutional Court before being signed into law by President Iván Duque.
However, the initiative is not without its criticisms stemming from its content. For example, the project proposes that the position of municipal registrar change from a technical to a professional role, which implies that they would be appointed and removed freely. In entities such as the Comptroller's Office, the Attorney General's Office, and the Registry Office, payrolls have been used to return political favors through appointments. The change proposed in the new Electoral Code could favor such an ominous practice.
Furthermore, the project includes many incentives for voting: compensatory days for participating in elections; broader discounts on university tuition and military service books; and free transportation on election day, among others. While it is true that the underlying intention is to reduce abstentionism, all these prerogatives reduce the costs of clientelism. That is, candidates who resort to practices such as exchanging goods for votes, especially in the regions, will have a larger market of voters willing to participate and at a lower cost (since they have all the conditions to go to the polls).
Finally, the decision to reform the electoral process so profoundly implies massive pedagogy, as the actors participating in the proposed voting modalities are numerous: voters, jurors, witnesses, vote counters, Registrar's delegates, notaries, systems engineers, etc. If several of these changes are implemented in 2022, as the Registrar indicated, the time to educate the population of urban and rural Colombia in new technologies is very limited.
To conclude, the follow-up of this statutory law in Congress must be rigorous. As we have seen in the past, congressmen's proposals alter the original meaning of the bill on many occasions, even through the well-known “riders” that favor certain sectors. Regardless, there are many unanswered questions from the submitted text: How is the null vote eliminated in the current modality of voting? How is the identity of the voter who exercises their right online verified? Who can vote before a notary and how much advance notice is required? What are the costs of this major electoral shift? (Given the difficult situation the country is experiencing).