The president of the board of directors of the Electoral Service, Andrés Tagle, participated together with the agency’s national director, Raúl García, in a hearing called by the Constitution Commission of the Chamber of Deputies in order to deal with the complaint about the publication of a file with personal data from the register for the 2021 municipal elections.
In information provided by Third, where the violation of personal data of 15 million voters corresponding to last year’s municipal votes was disclosed, the Constitution Commission of the Lower House summoned the highest authorities of the entity to deliver information on the fact.
The Segpres minister, Giorgio Jackson, and the undersecretary of the same portfolio, Macarena Lobos, also participated in the session, with the intention of obtaining more details from Servel about the measures adopted after the publication of the document, which contained, among other things, the RUT, political militancy and belonging to the original people of the people.
In this regard, the president of the board of directors, Andrés Tagle, revealed that there are people “suspended” for the publication of the document, but that he cannot provide more information “because there is a reservation in that procedure. Due process must also be respected.”
Regarding the number of downloads of the file that was published on the Servel page, Tagle pointed out that “we do not have them at this time. We do not have that information”, so “it is obviously something that we are going to have to improve with the new protocols in the future.
In any case, he emphasized that “in no case is there a violation of the secrecy of the vote”, since “neither the Servel nor anyone else has that information, since it is impossible to distinguish to which voter a vote belongs after depositing it in the ballot box” .
For his part, the national director of the organization, Raúl García, stated that “as a result of this serious and serious event, as we have recognized, we are going to enter into a process of reviewing all our internal procedures in order to detect those areas that need to be reinforced and strengthened”.
“We are going to continue doing it so that citizens and the country have absolute peace of mind that within our institution, there are processes and procedures to guarantee reservations for all the information that requires it,” he added.
The Segpres minister, Giorgio Jackson, specified that from the government they will be “respectful of the internal investigation process” of the Servel, and that they will wait for more information “before being able to issue any major opinion on the matter.”
The deputy and president of the Constitution commission, Karol Cariola, expressed her annoyance with the null delivery of records by the entity, emphasizing that “there is no self-criticism.”
“Thirteen days have passed since these events occurred and, unfortunately, until now they do not know how many downloads there were, nor has an effort been made to identify where this data is, it seems to me that it effectively shows that there is no compliance with the duty of a public institution,” he said.
In this sense, Kariola affirmed that “however autonomous the institution may be, it is the one that has the responsibility to safeguard democratic processes, and I believe that this has to be safeguarded accordingly,” for which he called on the national director , Raúl García, to “consider” his resignation from office.
