Colombia’s registrar general warned President Alvaro Uribe that dead people could be eligible to vote in the Congressional elections in March and the Presidential elections in May.
Following mysterious voting by dead people in the 2006 elections, Registrar General Carlos Ariel Sanchez has been asking since 2008 for funding to clean up the country’s registers, he says.
In a letter to Uribe, Sanchez claims that his office never received the necessary funds to make sure deceased Colombians are removed from the voters list.
To completely update the country’s registers and to prevent dead people from voting, the National Registry requested COP54 billion in 2008, but only received COP12 billion in 2009. COP34 billion will be available for 2010, Sanchez says, but to completely clean up the registry his office needs until July, while elections are scheduled to take place in the preceding months.
