Many polling stations for Colombia’s 2026 elections are under threat. Less than a year before Colombians return to the polls to choose their next president, a new report is raising profound questions about one of the most essential pillars of democracy: Will Colombian citizens be able to vote freely?
According to the Institute of Political Science Hernan Echavarria Olozaga (ICP), criminal organizations and illegal armed groups may be exerting enough territorial influence in several regions to shape electoral behavior long before ballots are cast.
The warning goes beyond concerns about election-day fraud. It asks a deeper and more unsettling question: What does it truly mean to vote in freedom when fear has become part of daily life?
The report, titled “Voting in Fear: Signs of Criminal Interference and Coercion in Colombia’s 2026 Elections,” was produced by ICP with support from the Fundacion Colombia 2050.
It combines testimony from 126 election monitors stationed across multiple regions with a statistical review of 26,924 voting-station records from Colombia’s recent legislative elections. The study does not accuse any specific campaign or candidate, nor does it claim that electoral crimes have been conclusively proven.
Instead, it identifies patterns and warning signs that, because of their scale and consistency, merit urgent preventive action by Colombian authorities before the 2026 presidential race.
“The freedom to vote can be affected before a citizen even enters the polling booth, and the absence of open violence does not mean the absence of risk,” the report states in one of its most powerful conclusions.
That sentence captures the document’s central argument: The greatest threat to electoral integrity may lie not in the vote count itself, but in the territorial conditions under which voters make their decisions.
When democracy is weakened before election day
For years, discussions about election security in Colombia have focused on software, ballot counting, and the work of poll officials. The ICP report broadens that conversation by emphasizing that democracy can be compromised much earlier.
An election may appear orderly and transparent while still taking place in an environment where coercion, intimidation, and territorial control restrict the ability of citizens to choose freely.
This perspective is particularly relevant in Colombia, where armed conflict and illicit economies have shaped local political dynamics for decades. In some municipalities, power is exercised not only through formal institutions but also through illegal groups that control transportation routes, impose social norms, and monitor community behavior. Under such circumstances, political participation may be constrained long before a ballot is marked.
The report raises a critical question: Can a vote be considered truly free if citizens know their movements are being watched, their political preferences are being scrutinized, or support for certain candidates could expose them to retaliation?
By shifting attention from post-election audits to pre-election realities, ICP argues that defending democracy means ensuring that every voter can approach the ballot box without fear.
‘Mafia peace’ and the illusion of stability
One of the report’s most striking concepts is “mafia peace,” a term used to describe territories where visible violence declines not because the state has consolidated authority, but because criminal groups have already established effective control over communities.
In these areas, the absence of gunfire or public confrontations does not necessarily indicate institutional strength. It may instead signal that an illicit order has become so entrenched that overt violence is no longer needed to secure compliance. Communities understand the rules, and the consequences of disobedience are widely known.
This concept invites a troubling but important reflection. How many places appear calm not because democracy is functioning normally, but because criminal influence has become so pervasive that it no longer needs to announce itself? In such territories, silence can be less a sign of peace than evidence of deeply rooted coercion.
Cases documented across Colombia
The monitoring network assembled by ICP recorded concrete examples of how criminal interference can affect the electoral environment. In El Tarra (a municipality in northeastern Colombia, located in the Catatumbo region near the border with Venezuela), observers confirmed the presence of armed groups near a polling station.
In Guaviare (a department between the Orinoquia region and the Amazon rainforest), a leaflet attributed to the Amazon Block of dissident FARC factions imposed restrictions on the transportation of campaign workers and required citizens to carry their voting certificate to travel.
In Caqueta (a department in southern Colombia), messages reportedly demanded that residents present their voting certificate under threat of sanctions or fines.
In Guapi (a municipality located on Colombia’s Pacific coast in the western part of Colombia) and Lopez de Micay (a municipality also located in the Pacific region of Colombia along the Micay River, one of the most important waterways in the region), observers documented voters being escorted to polling tables and having their selections recorded.
In Bajo Baudo (in the department of Choco), Indigenous communities were allegedly pressured to vote as a group under threats and mistreatment.
Viewed individually, each case is alarming. Taken together, they reveal a broader pattern in which the secrecy of the ballot can be undermined through surveillance, intimidation, and social pressure.
Unfortunately, scenarios such as these have continued to recur throughout Colombia’s history, where elections unfold amid threats, bribery, and corruption scandals that ultimately overshadow the true meaning of free and democratic elections.
Two forms of criminal interference
According to the report, this interference tends to operate through two distinct but complementary mechanisms. The first is visible and overt, involving armed presence, checkpoints, movement restrictions, and explicit threats. The second is quieter and often more difficult to detect.
It relies on community pressure, informal demands about how to vote, social monitoring, and subtle guidance of electoral behavior without the need for open violence.
ICP suggests that this second form may be particularly dangerous because it can shape outcomes while leaving few formal complaints and little public evidence.
Another key finding of the ICP report is that the absence of official complaints should not be interpreted as evidence that no irregularities exist. “Fear of reporting is a cross-cutting factor,” the report notes.
In many municipalities, territorial pressure and the normalization of certain practices discourage citizens and local leaders from filing complaints. This observation is significant because it implies that underreporting may conceal a much larger problem. In environments where speaking out carries personal risk, silence becomes less a sign of stability than an indicator of vulnerability.
As part of its investigation, ICP met with representatives from several political parties to learn about the experiences of candidates campaigning in different regions.
According to the report, party officials said that the National Commission for the Coordination and Monitoring of Electoral Processes did not respond adequately to complaints involving threats, restrictions on campaigning, and extortion demands imposed on candidates seeking to enter certain municipalities. The incidents were concentrated primarily in Arauca, Cauca, Nariño, and Choco.
All parties consulted reported security threats affecting candidates, elected officials, or their relatives. The implication is profound as it becomes clear that if some candidates cannot campaign under equal conditions, the democratic playing field is inherently uneven.
The statistical finding that raised the strongest alarm
Beyond field observations, ICP conducted a quantitative analysis that identified 1,019 polling stations with at least three simultaneous signs of electoral irregularity.
These indicators included unusually high vote concentration, disproportionate margins between the first- and second-place candidates, exceptionally high or low turnout, dominance by a single option, and large margins in stations with substantial numbers of voters. Together, these polling stations accounted for 327,196 valid votes and represented a potential electorate of 494,434 eligible voters.
The report carefully emphasizes that these patterns do not prove electoral crimes. As it states, “The results do not allow us to conclude that electoral crimes have occurred or to attribute responsibility to specific campaigns or candidates, but they do reveal statistical configurations that warrant institutional attention and enhanced verification.”
The significance of the findings grows when viewed geographically. Nearly 90% of the atypical polling stations are in municipalities with documented armed-group presence. More than 86% overlap with territories previously classified as high risk by the Electoral Observation Mission (MOE).
In areas the report describes as under “coercive control” — defined as territories with stable armed presence, limited effective political competition, and documented social control — the rate of atypical polling stations is more than three times the national average.
This pattern suggests that electoral anomalies are most likely to emerge not in areas of open conflict, but in places where criminal control has become entrenched and normalized.
A number large enough to influence a national election
To illustrate the scale of the issue, the report notes that Colombia’s 2022 presidential runoff was decided by roughly 700,000 votes. The polling stations identified by ICP account for more than 327,000 effective votes and nearly half a million eligible voters.
In a closely contested presidential race, even a fraction of this voting universe could prove decisive. The report does not suggest that all of these votes are compromised, but it makes clear that the potential impact is far from negligible. Within the broader universe of atypical locations, ICP identified 718 polling stations across 15 departments that require heightened monitoring before the presidential election.
“The risk, therefore, lies before the ballots are cast, not in the count,” the report concludes. “The priority is not to review the result afterward, but to verify and observe critical territories before the presidential election day.” That statement encapsulates the report’s central recommendation: prevention matters more than post-election reaction.
Recommendations to protect electoral freedom
ICP urges Colombian authorities to strengthen territorial monitoring, establish secure reporting channels, and coordinate efforts among the National Civil Registry, Attorney General’s Office of Colombia, Inspector General’s Office of Colombia, Ombudsman’s Office of Colombia, and security forces.
The report also recommends deploying national and international observers before election day, expanding media coverage of territorial conditions, and urging presidential candidates to publicly reject any criminal interference in the electoral process.
With support from Fundacion Colombia 2050, ICP plans to expand its monitoring operation to 117 municipalities through a network of 204 monitors and territorial coordinators. The organization will also submit to authorities a list of 353 unique physical polling locations — equivalent to 458 prioritized cases when broken down by elected body — for detailed, station-by-station review.
The question Colombia must answer in 2026
The ICP report is not a prediction of electoral fraud, nor a call to question future results. It is a carefully documented warning that democracy can be undermined long before votes are counted. Its central message is that the legitimacy of an election depends not only on accurate tabulation, but on the genuine freedom with which citizens make their choices.
As Colombia approaches one of the most consequential presidential elections in its recent history — to be precise, exactly 12 days remain until the first round of Colombia’s presidential election — the country faces a defining challenge, to ensure that the next president is chosen not under the shadow of intimidation, but through the authentic and uncoerced will of the electorate, and until that changes, Colombia’s history will continue to repeat itself.