The term scrutiny has two uses, on the one hand, it is the a thorough examination or analysis of something, and on the other, within the social and political space, it consists of the counting of votes in an election.
Comprehensive examination that was developed regarding a particular topic
For example, at the request of a judicial investigation, it is common for an on-site scrutiny to be carried out in the place where a crime was committed to obtain from him some evidence regarding someone's guilt or more clues in order to uncover who has been the author of the crime in question.
Politics: vote counting after an election
The other recurring use of the term occurs in the political field of any community, since in this way it is designated to the count, to the computation that is made of the votes of an election, or failing that of the tickets, tickets, that have been awarded in a game.
The scrutiny turns out to be the most crucial moment of any political election because the winners will be the result of it, and from it they will be enabled to exercise in the public function; meanwhile, as a consequence of importance, scrutiny is found specially regulated and controlled by competent authorities to avoid manipulation of the results in favor of some faction and to the detriment of another, what is popularly called electoral fraud.
Generally, each political group has one or more prosecutors, per polling station, so that when the scrutiny is carried out, they can supervise that it is carried out under the established transparency standards, that is, to avoid any type of fanning of the competition that takes away or subtracts votes through some device. Of course, this circumstance is common when it comes to traditional elections in which they vote through paper ballots.
Types of scrutiny
There are two counting systems, manual scrutiny (It consists of the vote-by-vote count of each ballot box at the table, then follows the provisional scrutiny of the telegrams and the final scrutiny with the presence of a judge) and electronic scrutiny (or electronic voteIt is a modality that is not yet as widespread as a consequence of the excessive expense that it entails and also because of the criticism it has raised regarding the deficient controls it proposes; In this mechanism there are no ballot boxes, the data is immediately transmitted from the terminal in which the individual votes to the corresponding computer center, therefore, the final scrutiny of this type is carried out through a computer).
How it works and what is a data center
The so-called computer centers are decisive in the scrutinies since they are rooms specially dedicated and equipped to process data, for example of the legislative, presidential elections, of a nation, among other options.
Among those conditions that this room demands to observe are a commensurate temperature, a reliable security system, trained professionals, and special hardware and software.
In this space, the data sent from various places will be received, entered, processed, to later be published, informed to the public and the press. Therefore, it is essential that the system implemented there works correctly and efficiently in order to meet the information processing objectives.
With the passage of time brought about by the development of new technologies applied to this act, electoral scrutiny has been achieved with transparency and certainty.
Of course, this long ago was really a dream, even not so far back in time, in the first years of the last century, fraud was a recurring issue, precisely due to the lack of controls and a system that guaranteed that it did not mistakes or the aforementioned electoral fraud were made.
With fraud, many governments that did not want to lose power illegally intervened in the electoral process and ended up twisting the election in their favor, simply altering the vote count. Obviously, such action is an attack against the democratic system that is currently penalized in many laws that support this system of government.
