The June 2 elections They are considered the largest in the history of Mexico, since the holders of 20,708 federal and local positions at the national level will be renewed, so the electoral authorities have implemented various measures to guarantee the holding of the elections, promote the citizen participation and ensure results.
For the latter, the National Electoral Institute (INE) has two mechanisms to know the winners of the election in each position, which are: the Quick Count and the PREP, which although both give preliminary results of the number of votes , they do not use the same methodology.
According to the INE, the PREP is a system that provides preliminary election results, through the capture and publication of the data recorded by the polling station officials in the scrutiny and counting records of the polling stations that are received at the Data Collection and Transmission Centers (CATD).
This system makes it possible to publicize real time and over the Internetthe preliminary results of the elections on the same night of Election Day, “with certainty, timeliness and using the most advanced technology.”
For this reason, it is considered one of the electoral information mechanisms contemplated in the General Law of Electoral Institutions and Procedures.
The INE detailed that this process begins at the close of voting, at 6:00 p.m. (local time), when the polling station officials count the votes and fill out the Counting and Counting Minutes (AEC), in the presence of the representations of the Political Parties and Independent Candidacies, subsequently, according to the following phases:
- Taking a photo of the PREP Act in the box
At the end of filling out the AEC, it is signed by the polling station officials, as well as by the representatives of the political parties and independent candidates.
Subsequently, the electoral assistant trainer requests the PREP Act from the presidency of the Casilla Board of Directors and verifies that all the identification data in the PREP Act are legible and pastes the QR code with the corresponding data, and takes the photograph with the PREP Casilla application. and sends the image to the Image and Data Reception Center (CRID).
In the Data Collection and Transmission Centers (CATD), the Electoral Package is received at the receiving tables for the extraction of the PREP-Bag, which contains the corresponding Minutes, which is delivered to the collector, who uses the Automatic Sealing Device to print the date and time of collection in the PREP Record.
It is confirmed that the PREP Minutes have a QR code and that it matches their identification data. The digitizer performs the digital capture of the PREP Record with the multifunctional equipment or scanner.
Both the Minutes received in PREP Casilla and in CATD² are processed through the Monitor for Capture of Digitized Minutes (MCAD) system.
- Data Capture and Verification
The data recorded in the PREP Minutes are captured through the Record Capture Terminal (TCA) system. Two different capturers receive the same PREP Record and capture it, the system verifies that the data matches.
If the data recorded by the two capturists do not match, the PREP Record is sent to a third capturist for sending to the CRID. If it does not match, it will be sent to the Verification Center (CV) for final resolution.
- Publication of results
The publication of the preliminary electoral results begins at 8:00 p.m. (Central Time) on Sunday, June 6, 2021. The dissemination of the PREP data, images and databases is the responsibility of the Institute and the official disseminators .
It is confirmed with the Minutes Comparison (CA) system that the published data coincide with the data recorded in the PREP Minutes.
- Publication closing June 7
The PREP concludes no later than 8:00 p.m. (Central Time) on Monday, June 7, 2021.
The PREP Minutes are archived for later delivery to the presidency of the corresponding District Council.
- The Quick Vote Count estimates the trend of election results, while the PREP offers preliminary results.
- The Quick Count takes place on election night and the PREP operates for 24 hours starting at 8:00 p.m. that same day.
- The Quick Count is a statistical procedure that takes only some cells as the results, unlike the PREP that collects information from all the cells.
- The results of the Quick Count are announced in a public message to citizens, while the PREP is presented in real time and only through the internet portal.
