Senator calls for electronic voting by 2006

Colombia's Senator Fuad Char has called on the civil registry to introduce electronic voting for the 2006 presidential and congressional elections to improve electoral transparency, El Heraldo reported. The antiquated voting system is the reason behind the delay in naming the winner of the election for governor of Antioquia department, held on October 25 and 26, said the former president of the senate foreign relations committee. He blamed the country's 45-year civil war on electoral inefficiency, and said the civil registry has been "run down" by technology. "It has been 100 years since the bitter separation from Panama and the country continues with the same electoral system that started this fratricidal war between Colombians as a result of the fraud and chaos due to the obsolete counting of votes," Senator Char said in an open letter to Almabeatriz Rengifo, head of the National Civil Registry. Char is senator for the eastern Atlantic department.