Biometric identification voting systems will not be available for the upcoming October local elections, according to Colombia’s Interior and Justice Minister German Vargas .
The Interior Justice Minister Wednesday said that there is not enough money to implement the new voting system.
A full-scale implementation of the system has been debated since it was first presented in Cartagena, Bolivar in October of 2010.
The minister also said that implementing these machines is not an important issue in areas where armed criminal groups are seeking to control the results of the upcoming elections.
National Registrar Carlos Ariel Sanchez defended the new system, saying that the country has already spent $200 million on the modernization of the electoral process but “has not invested money in using the identification databases to prevent electoral fraud.”
According to Sanchez, “In Colombia we have an enormous gap in identification and elections. We have a really modern biometric identification system and an electoral system that’s obsolete,” El Espectador reported.
The registrar added, “The electoral census is now clean after two years of visits to more than 850 municipalities in the country seeking civil records of death.”
The biometric identification system ensures that voters cannot vote twice by checking voter identification cards and scanning a finger print.
Ariel Sanchez said that the departments with the highest risk for voter fraud are Atlantico, Antioquia and Cesar.