The use of colored pens in the voting envelopes may individualize the voter and that this represents a crime

By Reverso

A warning circulates in social networks from a user who shared more than 5,000 times on Twitter and was retweeted among others by the director Juan José Campanella.

The thread reads as follows: "For those who will supervise: bring several colors of pens to sign the envelopes and change during the election. When they put the envelopes, check that it matches the current color with which they are signing at this time"(Sic). The goal, according to the user, is to avoid what is called the "chain vote" (That is, political indicators give many people ballot papers in envelopes already signed by the table authorities to put them to the polls and make sure they vote for the party that 'they wish).

According to specialists, this request could encourage prosecutors who use pens of multiple colors to commit a crime when the voter is identified. In addition, The Federal Electoral Prosecutor of Buenos Aires, Jorge Di Lello, and the Secretary of the Judiciary of the National Electoral Chamber, Hernán Gonçalves Figueiredo, agreed during a dialogue with Reverso that "the vote in the chain is a myth ".

"They invent a procedure that does not exist in the electoral code. What they do, is to open the power to someone to accuse you of scoring votes. If you choose the pen that you use for each vote or what you give to each voter, it is a way to mark the votes, "said Reverso Pablo Secchi, executive director of the organization The Power citizens., the Argentine chapter of International transparency.

For its part, María Esperanza Casullo, a political scientist and doctoral student in government at Georgetown University in the United States, also warned in Twitter: "Voter envelopes must not be marked, signed with colored pens, or with different signatures, nor do anything that identifies who votes after or raises suspicions. ".

In the same line, the Training Manual for Party Prosecutors The National Electoral Directorate (DINE), which reports to the Ministry of the Interior and Public Works of the Nation, states (page 31) that during the voting procedure, after signing an envelope and l & # 39; have handed over to the citizen, you should avoid individualizing the voter. "Prosecutors who wish to sign may do so, but must sign several [sobres] to avoid the individualization of the voter, "says the manual.

The crime of "breaking the secrecy of the vote"

When it was discovered that the use of color pens aimed to individualize the voter, the party prosecutor could be sentenced to 3 months to 3 years imprisonment for using "means violating the secrecy of the vote "., as stated in the provisions of the National Electoral Code.

The secretary of the National Electoral Chamber (CNE), Hernán Gonçalves Figueiredo, told Reverso: "There is more myth than reality in the vote at the Cadena chain". It is enough that the prosecutors are attentive. And avoid being questioned by mechanisms to effectively identify the voter.

For his part, the electoral prosecutor, Jorge Di Lello, told the press that the use of color pens "can cancel all votes that have this void because everything has to be uniform, so that" there is no risk of not preserving identity. "And he acknowledged that" the voting chain is kind of an urban myth ".

"Since I became electoral prosecutor, I have heard these warnings or media complaints, but I have never been sued, whether in Capital as a trial attorney or in all of country as a state prosecutor, "said Di Lello, serving for 12 years. August 1994(see designation here).

According to Article 93 of the National Electoral Code, "the prosecutors of political parties are entitled to sign the envelope on the same face as the president of the election and must ensure that the one who is filed in the ballot box is the same one that was given to the voter (…) When the attorneys will sign an envelope, they will be forced to sign several, in order to d & # 39; avoid identification of the voter ". C & # 39; is to say: nowhere in the Code does the color change in the pens make any reference.

This note is part of Reverso, the collaborative journalistic project that brings together more than 100 media and technology companies to intensify the fight against misinformation during the campaign.