Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) applauded the Colombian electoral integrity system following a trip to the country as an observer in Sunday’s presidential election, describing it as “world-class” and a model to learn from for the United States.
Sen. Moreno made the remarks during a call with the media on Tuesday in which he detailed his experiences in the country as an election observer and responded to claims by outgoing President Gustavo Petro, a Marxist who regularly boasts of his membership in a terrorist guerrilla, that the election was fraudulent. Sen. Moreno gave Colombian authorities an “A+” for their handling of the election and dismissed Petro’s refusal to accept the results of the election, noting that Petro’s hand-picked successor, Sen. Iván Cepeda, had publicly come out in defense of the election results.
The Colombian-American senator described an intricate security system in which Colombians are allowed to vote only with a federally issued identification card, ballots are filled out and tallied on paper, and no mail-in voting is allowed. Even abroad, Colombian citizens must visit a consulate in person to vote. Sen. Moreno suggested that America could significantly improve its own election integrity by taking even a small number of these measures, such as requiring identification to vote. Congress is currently debating a bill that would change voting requirements to align more with those of Colombia, the SAVE America Act, which Democrats are loudly decrying as discriminatory and equating to Jim Crow-era bigotry.
Colombia held its first round of presidential voting on Sunday when all 14 candidates were on the ballot. As no candidate obtained 50 percent or more of the vote, the race will go to a second “runoff” election featuring the top two candidates in the first round. Outsider conservative candidate Abelardo de la Espriella won the first round with 43.74 percent of the vote, while Sen. Iván Cepeda obtained 40.90 percent, enough to enter the runoff. The establishment conservative candidate, Sen. Paloma Valencia, came in third place and immediately pledged support to de la Espriella.
“The elections in Colombia were done, actually, extraordinarily well,” Sen. Moreno explained on Tuesday. “The process that they have for elections — I think there are some things that we can learn here in the U.S. They require 100-percent proof of citizenship in order to get a national ID that’s required to obtain before you can vote.”
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