Colombia’s Petro Insists on 2022 Election Fraud, Claims ‘Evidence’

Written on 02/24/2026
Josep Freixes
Credit: Andrea Puentes / Presidency of Colombia.

The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, once again alleged fraud in the 2022 legislative elections and said his coalition, the Historic Pact (Pacto Histórico in Spanish), was harmed in the vote count. The president asserted that he has “evidence” that would demonstrate irregularities in the counting system and warned that risks to the transparency of the elections scheduled for next March persist.

The statements, made amid the final stretch toward a new election day, reopen a sensitive debate over the credibility of Colombia’s electoral system. While President Petro insists on the need to review the technical and contractual procedures of the process for possible fraud, electoral authorities reject the accusations and defend the strength of the current oversight mechanisms.

All of this comes less than two weeks before the legislative elections on March 8, which will renew the Senate and the House of Representatives, the two chambers that make up Colombia’s Congress, for the 2026–2030 term.

Colombia’s Petro insists on 2022 election fraud, claims ‘evidence’

Colombia’s Petro has repeatedly said that inconsistencies and possible fraud occurred in the March 2022 legislative elections that affected his political movement.

According to the head of state, during the preliminary count and the official tally, there were alleged alterations in the E-14 forms and in the digital consolidation of results that initially reduced the Historic Pact’s vote totals by hundreds of thousands of ballots.

The president has said that, thanks to the work of election witnesses and formal complaints filed before the vote-counting commissions, part of those votes were recovered in the official count. However, he insists that the irregularities detected were not isolated incidents but signs of structural failures that, in his view, compromise the transparency of the system.

In his most recent remarks, Petro said he has documentation, testimony, and technical analyses that would support his allegations. He mentioned the case of an election witness in Pereira who reportedly warned about the improper completion of forms and the movement of electoral materials in spaces without sufficient supervision.

For the president, these elements constitute indications of possible manipulation that must be thoroughly investigated.

In this regard, the Colombian president posted a lengthy note on his X social media account, accompanied by photographs, in which he denounced this alleged contempt ruling related to “electoral fraud” in 2014, which he said involved the MIRA party.

“The contempt of the ruling on electoral fraud against MIRA, annulling the 2014 Senate elections. There it was ordered to have a ‘polling station software’ from the state and run by the state,” he wrote, adding that since that year, the electoral preliminary count software used by the company Thomas Greg & Sons “is illegal.”

Petro demands verification of the 2022 preliminary count and warns about 2026

In a subsequent comment published this morning on the same social network, Petro doubled down on his serious allegations, calling for the preliminary count software of the company ASD, a subsidiary of Thomas Greg and Sons, to be “verified by an external audit of experts appointed by the parties and by international and national oversight bodies.”

In this regard, the Colombian president said that “the company ASD was involved in the fraud uncovered by the Council of State in a ruling handed down by the full chamber in the 2014 Senate elections, later in the 2022 presidential primary and congressional elections in Colombia, and it was reported in the most recent elections in Honduras,” and he raised alarm over what could happen in this year’s elections.

“As if nothing had happened, it is once again the company that will conduct the preliminary count for the 2026 congressional and presidential elections,” he lamented.

The main focus of the president’s criticism centers on the software used for the processing and transmission of results.

Petro has expressed concerns about the hiring of private companies in charge of technological logistics, including firms historically linked to the organization of elections and the issuance of official documents, such as Thomas Greg & Sons, with which he has maintained a fierce dispute for years that led the state to decide not to renew its concession for issuing passports in Colombia.

The president has argued that control over such a sensitive component as the vote-counting computer system should not depend on private operators without thorough and public oversight. According to his version, opacity in some contracts and the lack of broad independent audits create a scenario that, under certain circumstances, could facilitate alterations.

Response from the electoral authorities

The National Civil Registry, for its part, rejected the accusations of structural fraud and defended the existing oversight mechanisms.

National Registrar Hernan Penagos has stated that electoral processes include technical audits, the presence of party witnesses, international observation, and verification stages that allow inconsistencies to be corrected.

Penagos emphasized that differences between the preliminary count and the official tally are common in any electoral system, since the former is informational in nature and the latter officially consolidates the results after reviewing tally sheets.

In his view, the corrections made in 2022 demonstrated that the system works and that it has mechanisms to remedy human errors or formal inconsistencies.

In response to the president’s serious remarks yesterday, the agency issued a video this morning on its social media account on X explaining how the controversial E14 form works, which is at the center of the president’s allegations of fraud, urging citizens “not to fall into disinformation.”