The lawyer Jorge Rivas Careaga, representative of the PEN, explained in which cases it is appropriate to request the opening of Envelope 4 and why the Concertación’s claim to request the recount randomly is inadmissible. He described everything as a “junk”.
During the elections, the electoral process culminates with the day of the vote and with the public and supervised scrutiny, whichwhich consists in that, the polling station president shows the bulletin that was used, passes it through the ballot box and the vote that is printed on the bulletin appears in the ballot boxthere we have the first control mechanism
Then, the scrutiny minutes are printed, the certificates of results are delivered to the proxies and interested parties in general, the envelopes are closed, sealed, and sent to the TSJE
“Suppose that at table one of a college, candidate A had 200 votes and candidate B 100 votes. Was there a claim on the table? No, because we all agree that these are the results of the table, but when we go to the JE we find that B had 300 and A 0. Something is not right or the record is false or it was adulterated in some way, that is one of the complaints,” said Careaga, by way of example.
In such a case, the correct way to challenge is by presenting the certificate of results, contrasting it with the record in the hands of the TSJE.
In this sense, the opening of Envelope 4 can be requested, but, within the framework of a challenge for falsification of the tally sheet.
“The provisional calculation, the judgment of the final act and the proclamation are a regulated procedure, we have to be serious with the challenges, it is not that Dr. Polo or Laura in America decide, I cannot ask that Envelope 4 be opened randomly, because the law tells me that it is done at each stage, because it is not allowed the recount is a hodgepodge”he claimed.
He insisted that it is not appropriate to randomly open Envelope 4 in 10% of the tables, because what the law says is that the opening is made based on the judging of the minutes, therefore, if there is no challenge, it makes no sense to open the envelope.
