What is the interim review and what is happening with the new software?

• This is the first vote count. This has no legal validity, but it is the first results that are presented a few hours after the end of the vote.
• The new software proposed by the national government will allow the data of telegrams to be sent digitally from schools and not from the post office, as it was the case up to now.
• The opposition warns against possible fraud. The experts reject it but fear that the election will be delegitimized because the software can not be audited.

Provisional control is the first count of votes made after the end of the elections. Its purpose is to inform the public of the preliminary results, but it has no legal validity. The data that legally counts and that declare winners and losers are those of the final control, which is completed no later than 10 calendar days after the election, in accordance with Article 112 of the
National Electoral Code.

On election day, at 6 pm, the elections are closed and the counting of votes begins. The polling stations are open and the president with the party prosecutors counts vote by vote. From this calculation flow
three documents to be signed by the chairman of the commission and the prosecutors: the minutes of the count, the telegram and the certificate of control. In them, the voting data of each table are reversed.

What's new for these elections?

From this election, new software will be used to
acquired through tendering through the intermediary of Correo Argentino and is called
SmartTally. He said to
Reverso the Venezuelan company that created it, Smartmatic, was specially designed for Argentina and will allow telegrams with the votes of each board to be transmitted digitally from each school to the computer centers. Previously, telegrams were sent by land to the post office, where they were scanned, and then to the National Elections Directorate (DINE), which is under the Ministry of Interior of the Nation.

On Thursday, July 11, the National deputies of the Front for the victory and the authorities of the justicialist party of the province of Buenos Aires returned
Press conference during which they questioned the company and evoked a possible fraud. The truth is that this software is designed to simplify the transmission of information during the provisional check and not in the case of the final check, which is the only one to have legal validity.

According to the specialist Beatriz Busaniche, president of the
Fundación Vía Libre – an organization specializing in digital and thematic rights related to free software and new technologies- ", with the new system could not produce a fraud that would undermine the integrity of the election, since two of the three documents that are used for the control (the act of counting and the certificate of control, which are signed by the president and prosecutors) are not handled by the new system. "

However, according to the expert, the legitimacy of the election could be affected, because the provisional count (the results of which are usually communicated first to the citizens) will be done with software that can not be audited by parties and which could differ from the result resulting paper documents (telegrams, minutes and certificates of control).

The National Electoral Chamber (CNE) has published a
agreed in 2017 when it spoke of the need to change the traditional control system: "In particular, measures should be taken to speed up and reduce the time of data transmission, through procedures such as scanning and transmission. possible – from the polling establishment itself, to achieve a broader information and therefore more homogeneous and representative of the election result, without the possibility of manipulation by order ", said judges Alberto Dalla Vía and Santiago Corcuera.

But the focus of opposition issues, the Frente de Todos and the Federal Consensus, concerns two aspects of digitization: the failure of the software test last month and the inability to see the source code. 39, ie to know how the program was developed and whether it has vulnerabilities or not.

The failed test and its scope

On June 29, DINE conducted the first national rapid counting system test with operators. Another test took place on Saturday, July 13 (only internal to Correo Argentino). As explained to these media by the Secretariat for Political and Institutional Affairs of the Ministry of the Interior, July 20 will be open to the press and political parties. In the previous two, there was no external participation.

In the first case, there were failures recognized by the company and the national government. According to the Secretariat, there were technical problems, particularly with regard to the Internet connection of netbooks used to transmit data from schools.

Reverso He contacted Hernán Etchaleco, spokesman for the Secretariat, and the latter acknowledged that "there were connectivity issues between the schools" and the new system, although he said that "nothing did not happen without being expected ". In addition, he added: "Today, we have [por el 13 de julio] a new test and everything went well. "

Etchaleco also told the media that "simulations are performed two: one before the PASS (July 20) and another before the general". The manager explained that "in the exercises, all schools and all transmission centers of the Post Office are open" who were selected for the test "and that the examination is simulated as if it was the election day ". "They are open to political parties and the press," he said.

The Federal Consensus, through its agent, has
presentation to the CNE requesting information about the software. "We met informally on Saturday [por el 13 de julio] This would have been a test without the participation of political parties, "said the candidate for deputation by federal consensus Alejandro" Topo "Rodríguez.

Closed code

The "source code" of the SmartTally software is closed. This means that only society can observe or control it, making it impossible for political parties to control it. No one else than the company knows how software works at the computer level. Therefore, according to specialists and opposition representatives, this could delegitimize the election in case of failure of the digital data transmission.

"If you fall asleep Sunday night thinking that a candidate has won, then in two weeks, the final exam indicates that something else can be a problem." If you confuse Sunday's election information with Monday's newspaper coverage, which could happen, you can delegitimize deeply the electoral process, "he said.
Reverso Busaniche, president of Vía Libre.

In addition, he added: "In general, the voter keeps the result of Sunday night, it is very rare that he sees the result of the final exam."

From the company, Smartmatic explained to this media that there is a second secure copy data processing software that will be delivered to the CNE. "If it is necessary to revise the code, there is a copy to do it.This copy is delivered as it will be used during the elections and is in a safe," Samira Saba said. , director of communication of the Venezuelan multinational.

Sebastián Schimmel, Secretary of the House Electoral Action, confirmed
Reverso that the company must send a copy but that it has not yet arrived, although it has specified that it must be sent before the primary elections of August 11th. "Friday of the last week [por el 12 de julio] an office was sent to DINE to remind him that he must send the software. It is a copy that we keep only on deposit and we protect it. We do not have the right to open it, "Schimmel said.

Smartmatic in other countries

This is not the first time that Smartmatic has participated in an election: it has sold various software to countries such as Italy, the Philippines, El Salvador and Venezuela, among others. Each country used a different technology and posed different problems in each country.

In El Salvador, in 2018, there was an error in a script (a document containing instructions written in programming codes) that had erroneous preferences in favor of particular candidates, and then those who had received fewer votes. found themselves. Last May, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) of this country
required a million dollars from the company Smartmatic in compensation for failures. Finally, five months after failure, the TSE
He managed to charge $ 226,000 to the company.

The European Union has published a
report where he explained how all the elections took place in El Salvador. There, he indicated that there were problems in the simulation and that only half of the results had been successfully transmitted. However, after the election, the electronic transmission of the results was ranked as "good" and "very good" with 97% of the polling centers observed.

In the Philippines, he said
Reverso the Filipino journalist
Gemma Bagayaua-Mendoza, who
he wrote different
About the elections in this country, there were allegations of fraud, although most "are based on unproven failures".

In Lombardy, Italy, Smartmatic was hired in 2017 for a referendum, a "yes" or "no" consultation. There, two days before the vote, the system they were going to use and the keys of the voting machines were filtered. Nail
Corriere Della Sera newspaper quoted Matteo Flora, an expert in computer security and hackers, as saying that many sensitive information, pbadwords, user names and authentication keys are now accessible to all.

In Venezuela, Smartmatic participated in various elections from 2004 to 2017. In the
Constituent National Assembly election of 2017, the same company acknowledged that there had been fraud and that it is the people who manipulated the data.
You can see here the statements of the company at this time.

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.

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. The means of contact to join are: by mail to [email protected], by
WhatsApp and / ReversoAr on all networks (with the respective links).

By Rosario Marina, Imanol Subiela and Matías Di Santi

Edition: Laura Zommer, Elodie Martínez and Juan José Domínguez

IN ADDITION