69 ballot boxes open, the Capital inside and a Sunday that still resonates in Justice

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At 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, the Electoral Justice had validated 4,500 minutes (out of 9,060) of the provincial elections held last Sunday. “We are doing well, at the desired pace,” confirmed Chamberlain Leonardo González Zamar, from the Electoral Tribunal, who maintains next Wednesday as the end day of the official count.

The validation of almost 50% of the records is the result of the expansion of the validation tables (they started with 10 and are now 18) and the “incidence” ones (1 at the beginning, 5 yesterday). That allowed us to complete all the data from the Capital yesterday.

How many ballot boxes were opened? Until yesterday, 69. With worrying data: whenever the opening is requested, it is because the minutes have some inconsistency related to the categories for which they voted (governor, legislator, or court of accounts, among others). But what happens when the votes are reviewed? Other inconsistencies appear with the already “consolidated” count on the day of the election.

“What many table presidents signed is anything,” said a proxy.

that sunday

Last Sunday, at mid-morning, the Ocasa company warned that there was a crucial logistics problem: of the 2,500 “technicians” that it had recruited to handle the scanners in the voting centers with the Turing system, only 1,500 had shown up (there were 1,487 voting centers enabled). The data, revealed by a high source of the Justice of Córdoba, set off alarm bells among those responsible for the election who demanded a response to the situation.

The Ocasa “contingency plan” was then launched, which would correct the lack of personnel. The company assured that it had 17 transmission “nodes” to which the Electoral Public Prosecutors (Fipes) would take the information (digitized, on flash drives) and from there they would join the count.

But the plan did not remedy anything.

The lack of personnel had mortally wounded the provisional scrutiny. Examples? In the voting centers, there were polling station authorities who, given the lack of technicians for the scanners, Fipes to transfer the information and means of mobility, decided to use their private vehicle and drive to the nearest “node”. They say, from the Judiciary, that they came to offer their own vehicles to go out and look for what was missing in the scrutiny.

Others resigned themselves to not being able to transmit anything.

At 11:00 p.m., the data load had reached 85% of the tables and from there progress slowed down. To make matters worse, the difference was minimal and the population would go to sleep full of distrust and without knowing who had won.

In the computer center of the capital Córdoba, everything began to become tense and there were moments of great tension. There were judge Marta Vidal, the chambermaids González Zamar and Jorge Namur, along with Pablo Colella (from Ocasa) and Sergio Angelini (president of MSA, the company responsible for Turing).

Several present assure that the claims were crossed between private companies, and generated a lot of discomfort among the representatives of the Justice that demanded urgent solutions.

At that point, the situation was already of such institutional gravity that two members of the Superior Court of Justice (TSJ) were also present: its president, Domingo Sesín, and the member Sebastián López Peña.

The elections had closed at 6:00 p.m. and it was impossible to know if there would be a result that night. So much so that Luis Juez himself communicated with a representative of the Justice present in the computer center. He wanted to know what was going on. The dialogue was rough.

The night continued with the suggestion of the TSJ that one of the chambers of the Superior Court (they preferred that it not be Vidal) speak to the media to give certainty about the progress of the count. The idea, they emphasize in Justice, was for the population to understand that the cleanliness of the election was not at stake and that the minutes – signed by the polling station authorities and prosecutors and kept in the polls – would ensure transparency.

On Monday, González Zamar and the other chambermaid, Jorge Namur, took charge of facing the media and advancing towards the definitive scrutiny. At the same time, Sesín announced the opening of an administrative investigation to determine what had happened with the scrutiny (in the week, there were already several meetings of the TSJ to speed up the investigation).

Tribunal

The formation of the Electoral Tribunal had begun last year, when the Justice appointed Namur (member of the Marcos Juárez Civil, Commercial, Family and Labor Chamber) and González Zamar (member of the Civil and Commercial Appeals Chamber of 1° Nomination of Córdoba) to accompany Judge Vidal in the year of provincial voting.

The names of the chamber members were defined and “the main political forces” of Córdoba were consulted, as explained by the Courts, to which they added: “Everyone agreed.”

The Tribunal was constituted on February 1 of this year, although the lack of definition by Governor Juan Schiaretti regarding the date of the provincial election kept him waiting for the organization of the vote. Finally, on Monday, March 20, the day was announced (June 25) and since then the process to hire the companies that would provide the logistics has been launched.

The issue of uncertainty was not minor. So much so that in Justice they are evaluating “going out and talking” about the convenience of setting a fixed date for the next elections.

The process continued with a price check to which Ocasa and Correo Argentino presented themselves (Andreani consulted, but did not advance). Both, confirm from the Justice, offered their own software for the transmission of data.

Ocasa won, who would work with MSA and Turing (judge Vidal. The contract was signed on May 4. And last Sunday she was the one who carried out an unsuccessful scrutiny, which went down in history.