“If the voter does not receive an economic dressing, he does not vote. It can be money, a public position, favors or having the front of the house painted.” In 2018, the words of Roberto Gerlein, a former senator from the Caribbean coast who held a seat in the Senate for 50 years, already showed how this illegal practice has marked the elections of recent decades in Colombia. “It is traditional not only in the towns of the Atlantic but in all the departments of the coast and has spread throughout the country. In Bogotá they buy votes, in Medellín they buy votes; in Pasto they buy votes, in the Valley they buy votes,” the former congressman, who died in 2021, said in an interview at the time. Now, although according to several experts, this illegal practice has become more sophisticated, it is still present throughout the country. Just two days before the votes for Congress and the presidential consultations this Sunday, the Electoral Observation Mission (MOE) received 79 complaints of vote buying.
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