2014 will be a busy year for electoral authorities in Colombia as citizens participate in at least two national elections: parliamentary on 9 March and Presidential on 25 May.
Since Colombia has a two-round system and 50% of the votes is required to become President in the first round, it’s highly likely voters will head back to the polls for a second round.
Today, the total population of this South American nation is estimated at 45,745,783.
Out of that total, 32,795,962 voters will be electing 102 senators, 166 representatives and 5 members of the Andean Parliament.
They use a total of 102,632,812 paper ballots in 96,722 polling stations distributed throughout 10,727 precincts across the entire country.
1,531 candidates will be trying to fill the available seats in the House of Representatives. 773 are disputing the seats in the senate – while just 23 candidates will compete for the Andean parliament.
In addition to their domestic voting population, these elections will also involve 532,384 Colombians residing abroad.
To serve them, 1,667 polling stations will be set up in 63 countries. Voters living in Australia and China have already started casting their ballots.
To mitigate identity fraud, the country will biometrically validate the identities of 7,415,024 voters.
This is an experiment that is slowly expanding to include more voters. It is an approach to implementing voting technology to increase transparency
To process results faster and lower the risk of electoral fraud in the final steps of the election, authorities are relying on 1,004 scanners to digitise result reports in 227 stations.
