According to national elections director alejandro tullio

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Results to be released early

More than 100,000 members of the Armed Forces and provincial police began the process yesterday of securing polling stations across the county ahead of tomorrow’s runoff between Daniel Scioli of the Victory Front (FpV) and Mauricio Macri of the Let’s Change (Cambiemos) coalition, while National Elections Director Alejandro Tullio has promised that anti-fraud measures will ensure that the decisive vote runs smoothly.

“I don’t think that fraud can be carried out against us, we have taken all of the precautions so that the electoral process is monitored. We’re prepared to reject and resist any hacking attempt” said Tullio at a press conference yesterday.

“They try it every year, every year we’ve had IT attacks, and they have never been able to get through our networks,” he said.

Polls close at around 6pm and Tullio said that as a result of an agreement between the FpV and Let’s Change the first results will be released at 7:30pm. Those preliminary results will not be enough to immediately establish the eventual winner of the make-or-break runoff between Scioli and Macri. By 10:30pm it may be possible to call the runoff for one of the candidates. The provisional count should be completed by midnight.

No less than 27,000 party scrutineers will be out in force tomorrow, with numbers split evenly down the middle.

According to Tullio, the money the state has spent on the elections have reached 3.9 billion pesos — of which 18.5 percent was distributed to the competing parties, 18 percent to the electoral courts and 56 percent for logistics, security and information technology.

In a repetition of previous procedures, representatives from provincial Ombudsman’s offices will be monitoring the election to ensure that vote counts are correctly transmitted for processing. As such, officials will be posted in at least half of the country’s 325 transmission centres to observe that results are correctly received and digitalized. They will also guarantee that video cameras overseeing the work are function properly.

In addition to support from the Armed Forces to secure polling places and all of the spending on information technology, more than 30 districts in remote and mountainous areas of the provinces of Córdoba, Jujuy, Salta and Tucumán will have ballot boxes delivered by mules.

Herald staff with DyN, Télam