Three days before Colombia goes to the polls to elect the president of the Republic, the National Civil Registry Office, the body responsible for organizing the elections, announced the exact number of citizens eligible to participate in that democratic day with their vote. That figure is technically known as the electoral census, that is, the list of Colombians who can go to the polls.
The electoral census is the official list where citizens eligible to vote and the polling station where they were assigned to exercise their right to vote appear. Based on that electoral census, Colombians can confirm whether they are eligible to vote. It is nourished and updated through the reviews constantly carried out by the Registry Office on the database of citizens who apply to process their citizenship card, register their ID document, and recover their political rights.
It is also updated with other developments such as the deaths of individuals, the suspension of political rights (due to judicial convictions, for example), or the updating of active-duty members of the public force, who, by constitutional order, cannot vote.
Number of citizens eligible to participate with their vote: More women than men are eligible
Based on those criteria, the Registry Office confirmed that a bit over 41,4 million citizens in Colombia are eligible to vote next Sunday, May 31, both within the country and abroad. Of that total, 21,298,492 are women, and 20,123,481 are men. All of them will be able to vote at 122,016 polling tables distributed across 13,742 polling places.
Within the national territory, 40,007,312 citizens (20,521,149 women and 19,486,163 men) are eligible, at 118,346 polling tables, which will be installed in 13,489 polling places: 6,010 in urban areas and 7,479 in rural areas.
Abroad, 1,414,661 people (777,343 women and 637,318 men) are eligible to vote at 1,489 polling tables until May 30 and at 2,181 polling tables on May 31, distributed across 253 polling places in 67 countries. The voting period abroad began last Monday, May 25, and ends next Sunday, May 31.
Amid so much information, if citizens have questions, they can consult their voting location through the institutional chatbot, in the ‘aVotar’ application, which can be downloaded free of charge from Google Play and the App Store, or on the National Registry Office website, www.registraduria.gov.co, by clicking the button ‘Consulta lugar de votacion’ (“Check voting location”).
Alliance between the Registry Office and TikTok
In addition, to provide citizens with truthful information and confront misinformation, the Registry Office and TikTok joined forces to develop a guide with key information about the electoral process on May 31. This guide is available on TikTok and gathers clear, accurate, and reliable information regarding the presidential elections. Thus, citizens can easily and safely access informative content directly from the official source.
Through this tool, the TikTok community will be able to consult information such as:
• Voting dates and schedules in Colombia and abroad.
• Who can vote.
• Polling location consultation.
• How to exercise the right to vote.
• Which offices will be elected.
• Verification of appointment as an election juror.
To access the guide, platform users must go to the search bar and type terms related to the elections, such as: elections, presidential elections, where to vote, or election jurors. Once the search is completed, the guide will automatically appear.
National Registrar of Civil Status Hernan Penagos reiterated the importance of consulting electoral information directly from official sources and called on social media users to act responsibly regarding the use and dissemination of content. “During election periods, levels of misinformation increase and, in Colombia, misinformation generates tragedies and can lead to violence,” he warned.
“In this context, it is crucial that citizens do not spread information without first verifying it. For this reason, we continue to promote initiatives that help citizens become better informed and mitigate the impact of fake news surrounding the elections,” Penagos concluded.
For his part, Gabriel Parra, TikTok public policy manager for the Andean region, highlighted that “after the success of the electoral guide during Colombia’s legislative elections [last March], where hundreds of thousands of people accessed reliable, relevant information from official sources, we are once again making this tool available to the community ahead of the presidential elections.”
“With this relaunch, we reaffirm our commitment to facilitating access to verified information at key moments for the country, also incorporating educational videos that will help people access content related to the election in an informed way, as well as combat misinformation,” he added.