Colombia. The National Registry of Civil Status of Colombia carried out last Sunday the largest deployment of biometric identification made to date in that country, after comparing the fingerprints of a potential of 3,388,731 Colombians in 15 municipalities of six departments in order to avoid impersonation of voters and jurors in the elections that sought to elect Mayors, Governors, Deputies and Local Administrative Boards throughout the Colombian territory.
To this end, the National Government, through the Registry, signed a contract with the so-called Temporary Union Validation 2011 worth $10,584,000,000 (US$5.6 million) to implement biometrics in 666 polling stations in the municipalities of Cartagena, Magangué and Carmen de Bolívar in the department of Bolívar; Cali, Yumbo, Jamundí, Palmira, Buenaventura and Yotoco in Valle del Cauca and in Soledad, Atlántico, as confirmed by VENTAS DE SEGURDIDAD through the National Registry.
Additionally, with its own resources, technical and human teams, the National Registry reached six more municipalities in three departments.
In total, the Registry was able to carry out the biometric identification of around 10% of the Colombian electoral census, thus avoiding voter impersonation, which is one of the most frequent electoral crimes in democratic days in this country, according to the risk map of electoral fraud prepared by the National Registry.
According to the Registry, these will be the last paper elections, since in the next elections, the presidential elections in 2014, Colombia seeks to implement electronic voting, and precisely the practice of biometric voting in some regions was part of that process.
