The elections were organized as established by the Colombian Constitution of 1991 by the National Electoral Council (Consejo Nacional Electoral, CNE) to elect Department governors with its respective Department Assemblies, Mayors with their respective City Councils and the Local Administrative Juntas (JAL).

This follows historical instances where politicians were elected with backing from the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a phenomenon highlighted in the parapolitics scandal.

The Attorney General of the Nation, Edgardo Maya Villazón, expressed reservations about conducting the elections under the existing electoral system, which has remained unchanged since before the 1991 Constitution and is susceptible to such frauds.

[2] While in some areas there are reports of untrusting the elections due to the break out of the Parapolitica scandal in 2006 in which it was discovered that members of the demobilized paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) had been colluding with political leaders and members of the public force in order thwart adversaries and advance politically.

This tendency of using violence to coerce the population escalated when the paramilitary groups influenced the previous 2003 regional, presidential and legislative elections.

[7][9] Onservers part of the mission sent by the Organization of American States (OAS) formally accused the FARC of being the main cause of the disruptions to the electoral process.

On October 29, 2007, a day after the election, protesters of the losing candidate for mayor in the municipality of Ciénaga de Oro, Córdoba Department rioted and burned down the City hall and the local office of the National Registrar of the Civil State, alleging that there had been fraud.