The National Registry confirmed that the minimum number of signatures required was 580,620, equivalent to 3% of the total valid vote in the 2018 Colombian presidential election, and that they had to be delivered to the registry by 17 December 2021.[4] On 17 December, the National Registry confirmed that seven pre-candidates had delivered the necessary number of signatures: Alejandro Char, Rodolfo Hernández, Federico Gutiérrez, Alejandro Gaviria, Luis Pérez, Roy Barreras and Juan Carlos Echeverry.[5] Of these seven pre-candidates, Char, Gutiérrez and Gaviria accepted the endorsements of political parties, thereby bypassing the necessity to run as independents, while Barreras and Echeverry later decided to drop out of the presidential race.[6][7] This left Hernández and Pérez as the only independent candidates in the race.