After Congressman Gonzalo de la Carrera accused Chile’s electoral service of fraud for including dead people on the electoral register, the entity released a statement. It explained that the list of voters was closed on May 1 and that there were checks and balances in place to prevent people from casting votes for dead voters. The service further countered that its actions had been prudent in this regard.
Chile’s Electoral Service (Servel) is firing back against accusations of electoral fraud. It all started with several Tweets by Congressman Gonzalo de la Carrera (Republican Party), accusing the entity of maintaining numerous dead people on electoral rolls. He argues this was a move to help the Apruebo option ahead of the Sept. 4 constitutional plebiscite.
In response, Servel released a statement claiming “misinformation” and explaining the presence of the dead on the final list. “In the first place, it is out of time. The political parties had the electoral register available 90 days before the election, and they had the right to present a complaint in the electoral court in regard to the things they considered wrong,” Servel wrote, quoting its president Andrés Tagle.
As for the deceased, Servel said that the majority are Chileans who died outside the country and whose deaths have not been processed. In addition, the electoral register was closed on May 1, so the people who passed away after that are on the list. Finally, to vote, people will be required to present identification, so it will be “impossible” for an impersonation to occur.
The statement went on to claim that “[t]he fact that this procedure prevents the impersonation of dead voters is the reason that it was prudent of the Electoral Service not to eliminate from the register voters who do not have a confirmed death, to avoid the mistake of taking from the list missing [and alive] persons and interfering with their right to vote, which would be more serious.”
Catalina Vergara is graduated in Social Communications from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She has previously worked on Strategic Communications.