The delays and irregularities that arose around the implementation of the electronic voting in the City of Buenos Aires and the subsequent complaints filed in the Justice not only exposed the officials in charge of ensuring the correct implementation of the voting mechanism but also put the magnifying glass on the company Magic Software Argentina (MSA), provider of equipment and logistics. Although the Buenos Aires government confirmed its intention to use the same system in the elections next October, it is not ruled out that the progress of the judicial investigation could move some piece of this board.
Of all the parties that attended the Simultaneous and Compulsory Open Primaries (PASO), the Juntos intern was the one with the most expectations. The disputes between Rodríguez Larreta and Patricia Bullrich, at the national level and between Jorge Macri and Martín Lousteau in the City of Buenos Aires generated tensions within the coalition. For this reason, In April, the Buenos Aires head of government decided to separate the national elections from the local ones using two different voting systems. Thus it was that for president the paper ballot was maintained -as in the rest of the Argentine territory- while to settle the candidate for future mayor of CABA, electronic voting would be used. What Larreta was looking for, according to information from his environment, was to reduce the disadvantage that his ally and candidate Martín Lousteau would have, who internally did not have a candidate for president.
But the bet did not go as well as expected. At the electoral level, neither the current head of government nor the former Minister of Economy managed to prevail in the internal ones. But even worsethe votes through the electronic system generated delays, anger and confusion in the voters and even complaints for its malfunction and poor foresight. Even the federal judge with electoral jurisdiction, Maria Romilda Servini, He announced that he will file a complaint in court. In a letter he referred to the process as “an inexperience never seen before in the organization and execution of an electoral process.”
Issues.
On Monday, April 10, when the internal opposition was going through one of its most critical moments, Rodriguez Larreta announced that the elections would be concurrent. That is to say, that on the same date and in the same establishment they would vote with two different systems. The traditional one for national positions and the electronic vote for local authorities.
Two days later, through Decree No. 109/23, the Head of Government made his decision official and the tender was opened for companies interested in participating. A month later, when the tender was closing, MSA was awarded as the winner, which was the only company that presented.
MSA, located in the technological district of Parque Patricios, had been the provider of the system in 2015, when electronic voting was used for the first time in the City, and also had in its history being the company behind the implementation of electronic voting in several other provinces and abroad: Salta, Neuquén and also in the Paraguayan national elections, earlier this year.
According to the bidding document, the “indicative” amount that the company estimated for the service for the three electoral days (the PASO, the general elections and a hypothetical ballot) was 29.1 million dollars, at a rate of 3.08 dollars per Buenos Aires voter in each of the instances. At the official exchange rate at that time, the total expenditure for the City Government was more than 7 billion pesos.
This figure contrasted with the budget presented by INDRA, which turned out to be the winner for the organization of the vote count at the national level. The Spanish company charged the same amount as MSA but to count the votes of an electorate fourteen times larger than that of the City of Buenos Aires.
At this point, one might wonder who owns MSA. The company belongs to Sergio Angelini and Alejandro Poznasky and was created in 1995. Over time, it specialized in providing computer services for votes.
Their debut at the head of the elections occurred in 2013, when the then governor of Salta, Juan Manuel Urtubey, hired them to impose electronic voting in the legislative elections of his province.
In 2015 they would be in charge of doing the same in the Federal Capital, where the system not only presented flaws and was denounced, but also its main detractor was one of those who most defended its use this year: Martín Lousteau.
“In the City of Buenos Aires it was shown that you could alter the ticket with the chip. In fact, they showed it to me. They did not want to give us machines and when they gave us the machines hackers came with a phone and modified the chip. With the voting card they posed as the table president and could even duplicate votes,” he said after losing in those elections. Eight years later he celebrated its implementation. The complaints at that time were the same suspicions that there were this year.
But the controversy does not remain only in the Federal Capital. MSA was implicated in another complaint this year in Córdoba. Organization Courier Argentina sa (Ocasa), in charge of electoral logistics in the Mediterranean province, subcontracted MSA to take charge of the provisional scrutiny of the June provincial elections through the Turing system. This system consists of scanning and digitizing the results report drawn up by the members of the polling station. Its objective is to “speed up” the reception of data in the operational centers. However, on the day of the elections, the province still did not load data at 11:00 p.m., which led the Superior Court of Justice to impose a fine. The conviction was appealed and is still being resolved in court.
Questions crossed borders when MSA, in alliance with other companies, provided services for the national elections in Paraguay. After the elections, the candidate who came third, Payo Cubas, affirmed that if it had not been “for the fraud” of which he was a victim thanks to “the election mechanism”, he would have prevailed in the voting.
NEWS tried to contact MSA but got no response.
Warnings.
The irregularities detected in the Buenos Aires elections had already been presented in the tests carried out after the approval of the tender. There were several accidents and errors. “They were held at the Usina del Arte and we would be about 30 people. The system never worked well, in fact, in a simulation a person voted and the machine ended up printing the vote for a Paraguayan candidate”tells NEWS one of the people who participated in the meeting.
Other irregularities and technical failures were added. As soon as the award was consummated, leaders of the Left Front filed an appeal because, according to that party, the body in charge of auditing the electronic voting system was not “impartial.” “One of the three in charge of the audit is the Information and Technology Operations Management, a department of the IGE, which is in charge of Jorge Ariel González. He can in no way be taken as impartial since in 2021 he was a contributor to Juntos por el Cambio”, explains the former legislator of the Left Unity Front, Patricio del Corro, who presented the judicial measure together with Myriam Bregman and Alejandrina Barry.
Indeed, according to the public consultation website for contributions from the National Electoral Chamber, González contributed $70,000 for the 2021 legislative election campaign. “The electoral statute itself says that the people who carry out the audit must to be independent and this clearly shows that González is not”, sums up del Corro.
Added to this presentation was another made by the Vía Libre Foundation for the Diffusion of Knowledge and Sustainable Development, which requested a precautionary measure to suspend the implementation of electronic voting. Both complaints were rejected by the Superior Court of Justice of the city of Buenos Aires (TSJ) in an “in limine” manner.
However, electronic voting returned to the judicial halls after the PASO on Sunday, August 13. The federal judge with electoral jurisdiction in CABA, María Servini, made two presentations for “investigation of crime” against officials of the Electoral Management Institute of Buenos Aires (see box). According to electoral justice data, a total of more than 300 citizen complaints were filed due to various violations at the time of voting.
Also, add the complaint made by the Foundation for Peace and Climate Change, against the MSA company and the Buenos Aires government for “leaving thousands of citizens with the certain impossibility of casting their vote, and enabling electoral fraud.” This complaint fell to federal court 6 of Comodoro Py.
Despite this, from the government headed by Horacio Rodríguez Larreta they pointed out that the voting method will be maintained in the October elections and affirmed that, far from presenting faults in 30 percent of the machines, as Servini maintained, only 2% of them had to be replaced during the elections.
Wrapped in complaints electronic voting is unknown for October and the 60 days remaining for the general elections must bring answers and solutions for its correct application and the elimination of suspicions. Justice will have a hard job ahead.
