Ecuador's Election Commission Halts Vote Recount

Yaku Perez (bottom row, second from right), indigenous candidate in Ecuador’s presidential election, claims fraud in February 7 presidential election. Source: Wikimedia.

Ecuador’s election commission, the National Electoral Council (CNE), halted the recount of votes cast in the February 7 presidential election after a majority of its five member council did not vote in favor of the recount. 

The CNE initially announced on February 12 that it planned to conduct a partial recount of votes cast in the presidential election, after Yaku Perez, a left-wing indigenous lawyer and activist, made unsupported allegations of fraud. 

Perez’s claims of fraud came in light of the announcement of a runoff election, which will take place on April 11, since no candidate secured enough votes to win the February 7 election. Perez claims he was fraudulently placed in the third position in order to prevent him from continuing to the April runoff. 

Perez garnered 19.38 percent of votes, while right-wing banker Guillermo Lasso, who placed in the second position, received 19.74 percent of votes. Lasso agreed to a recount after holding a meeting with Perez, also attended by members of the Organization of American States (OAS). Whoever proceeds to the runoff will face left-leaning economist Andres Arauz, who received 32.44 percent of votes in the first round of the election.

Prior to the CNE’s decision to suspend the recount, the UN urged the commission to process the recount with “transparency and promptness.” Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno, who did not run for reelection, expressed similar concerns, saying,“The country needs the results, but also the total confidence in those results.”

If the recount proceeds, the CNE will recount six million votes, approximately 45 percent of the total votes cast on February 7. According to the president of the CNE, Diana Atamaint, the initial plan is to conduct “a recount of 100 percent of the votes in the Guayas province” and a recount of 50 percent of votes cast in 16 other provinces.

This presidential election takes place during a tumultuous period for Ecuador, which is in the midst of an economic crisis worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Latin American Politics expert John Polga-Hecimovich, whoever cinches the presidency “will need to reconcile the need to address social grievances with fiscal reality.”