To date, the number of voting machines that ended up burned in the fire at the Superior Court of Electoral Justice (TSJE), which occurred at the end of September, is unknown. Neither, the exact number of devices used in the last internal elections on December 18.
This, added to the number of claims from various candidates about alleged irregularities, motivates the suspicions of an activist that there are machines declared burned that continue to work, and with it, generating fraudulent votes for certain candidates of the traditional parties.
Isabelino Rojas Carvallo, is one of the members of the organization “Fuera listas sábanas del Paraguay”, in charge of the computer part. He went to inspect the voting machines at the Superior Tribunal of Electoral Justice (TSJE), with the computer scientists from the same public entity.
After the work came to the conclusion that the machine is invulnerable. In other words, data cannot be uploaded within the polling place for various technical reasons. One of them is that the machine does not have any permanent memory, so it does not record anything while voting. Secondly, it does not have an internet connection, nobody can access the voting machine to modify any aspect. And finally, the machine does not record anything that the voter chose, the recordings are produced on an external chip that is inside the ballot papers that can only be read by a reader.
“So the only way to do fraud is by having the voting machine. Because the voting machine can be installed somewhere outside the established places. And I can already know who will be in charge of the table, copy their signatures or arrange with them to bring the ballot papers signed and vote in a certain amount sufficient to turn a vote and then distribute to my waiters so that they are incorporated with the legal votes that are going to be produced. It is the only way that one will commit fraud,” he said.
He pointed out that the ballots must already be completed in advance and in complicity with the polling station members they are introduced with the rest.
“For this event to occur, another situation must occur to guarantee it. There was no other way than to burn the warehouse where the machines were kept. That is the only explanation I have,” he noted.
The activist believes that only between 2,000 and 3,000 machines were burned and not the declared number of 8,500.
