Colombia. The uncertainty that currently remains regarding the application of electronic voting in the 2014 elections in this South American country, also leaves in view the process of biometric identification of the voter that has been advanced since 2009 by the National Registry of Civil Status, in the case of atypical elections and some pilot tests in party consultations.
The National Registrar of Colombia, Carlos Ariel Sánchez, emphasized the need for one process not to discourage the other, that is, that the implementation of electronic voting detracts from biometrics.
In this sense, the president of the National Electoral Council, Magistrate Carlos Ardila Ballesteros, agreed, who pointed out in this regard that "I have carefully followed the comments of the Registrar, and we believe that in that he is very right, one thing is that the voter fully identifies, that we have no doubt that the voter is who he says he is, and another thing is how we protect those votes. The issue of voter impersonation does not end with electronic voting, it has to do with a letter-fingerprint, with biometric identification, that is, with something that allows us to make sure that who votes really corresponds to that person who appears on the ballot that is authorized to vote. "
The dilemma of having to choose between electronic voting and biometrics has a budgetary fund, especially taking into account the high costs of implementing electronic voting, still uncertain because the Commission created for the adoption of this system has not completed an analysis in this regard.
