Andrés Tagle, president of the Electoral Service (Servel), declared himself concerned about the proliferation of fake news who, through social networks, question the impartiality of the entity responsible for organizing the next exit plebiscite, scheduled for September 4.
Tagle maintained on the Channel 13 program Mesa Central that concern reigns in the organization and that it could be greater “if there were a narrow result,” even though the entity that has to ensure the cleanliness of the result “is from the Electoral Qualifying Court, not the Servel”, he stated.
“It has been very harsh (the series of accusations) on social networks and built on the basis of false and invented news. This started strongly when we discovered the forgery in the sponsorship of the candidate (Diego) Ancalao, and from there we were accused that everything was wrong, “said Tagle.
Another of the lies that haunt the networks is the alleged authorization of tens of thousands of foreigners who still do not meet the requirement that establishes a residence term. “All of those are false and we investigate them. There is also a calculation with the scrutiny of 600,000 votes in duplicate tables, and that is a lie”, he added, which is explainable because “there are communes with two constituencies”.
“Many (fake news) are made in bad faith,” he asserted more, exemplifying the complaint made through Tik Tok about a Venezuelan with the right to exercise his right to vote despite the fact that he had been living in the country for just over a month. Chile, in circumstances that, according to the investigation, the foreigner has already been living in Chile for more than 5 years.
Likewise, Tagle came out at the crossroads of questions that arise from the right for the right to vote of people who are detained and disappeared during the dictatorship. “Of the total of disappeared detainees, many of them asked their families to be declared under presumed death, but there are 780 people who have not requested presumed death. We respect the reasons they have for it, it is understandable, but before the law those 780 do not have (certificate of) death, ”he declared.
Regarding the criticism of the people who will end up voting in an even more distant place after the georeferencing process, Tagle pointed out that this could be explained by the outdated address. “There may be cases in which it has not necessarily been in the closest (voting center) of all, it may be the second or third closest. We have data that we calculate mathematically: in the Metropolitan Region, which includes rural areas, those georeferenced reduced their distance from the premises by 50%, and it is a very good rate”.
Along with remembering that voting is mandatory and that they are obliged to report those who are absent before the Local Police Courts, the president of the Servel clarified that it is not possible to change the polling station. “The registers were sent to print. We have to assemble the boxes, put in a box the register of that table, the minutes, the necessary votes… The logistics of this process is not easy at all and there are 21 days left for this work, ”he said.
