Colombia’s national registrar announced that 40,000 people selected to be supervisors at polling stations in the upcoming presidential elections have been disqualified due to risk of fraud, El Espectador reported Thursday.
Registrar Carlos Ariel Sanchez explained that the supervisors were disqualified due to inconsistencies in the documentation they presented to the Electoral Council.
While it is impossible to prove that these individuals intended to commit fraud, Sanchez explained the decision to disqualify them as supervisors was taken as a preventative measure against fraud.
The 40,000 disqualified supervisors compose roughly 8% of the 500,000 people who will man polling stations across Colombia in the May 30 presidential election.
The announcement from the registrar comes a week after the Organization of American States released a damning report on Colombia’s handling of its March congressional elections, which cited about 15,000 irregularities across eighteen of the country’s departments.
The report highlighted several areas of the Colombian electoral process that need improvement, including: the training of election officials; the clarity of the ballot papers; the design and layout of polling stations to ensure privacy; public and political party access to tally sheets; the system of transmitting, processing and presenting election results.