The chairman of Colombia’s National Electoral Council, Marco Emilio Hincapie, announced Thursday that a new firm would be contracted to the task of ballot counting to replace telecommunications company UNE, reported radio Caracol.
The decision to replace the existing company was made following the voting irregularities that occurred during Sunday’s congressional elections, for which the country’s National Registry partly blamed the Colombian company.
The official announced that the new company, ASD, will be recounting the votes from last Sunday’s election, as well as working on Colombia’s presidential elections in May.
“They are in the process of legalizing documents, we are hoping that from one o’clock the new teams will be in place and the new software will be working; it’s a company that has worked effectively in other parts of the country,” said Hincapie.
The official added that he hopes that the re-counting process will begin after one o’clock on Thursday.
The latest decision by the National Electoral Council comes as a result of substantial controversy surrounding the ballot-counting process, with UNE on Wednesday blaming a cyber attack for downing the national elections webpage of the National Registry on the day of the election and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe on Tuesday requesting that the inspector general investigate National Registrar Carlos Ariel Sanchez for allegedly violating the weekend-long election alcohol ban with a drink of scotch.