Luisa Gonzalez Challenges 1,729 Minutes of the Ecuadorian Presidential Elections
Citizen Revolution leader Luisa Gonzalez (C). X/ @SoloCORREISTAS
April 23, 2025 Hour: 7:20 am
These tally sheets must be reviewed before the proclamation of the results that granted re-election to Daniel Noboa.
On Tuesday, Luisa Gonzalez, the former presidential candidate from the Citizen Revolution movement, challenged the validity of 1,729 vote tally sheets before the National Electoral Council (CNE).
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These tally sheets must be reviewed by the CNE before the official proclamation of the results that granted re-election to President Daniel Noboa. The 1,729 contested electoral records represent 4.16% of 41,544 scrutinized tally sheets and involve approximately 475,000 votes that may be fraudulent.
Approximately 84% of eligible voters participated in the second round of the presidential election, which was held on April 13 under heightened security measures in a country experiencing widespread violence due to the presence of organized crime groups linked to drug trafficking.
In this second round, Noboa defeated Gonzalez by more than 1.18 million votes, securing 55.6% of the ballots compared to 44.37% in favor of the leftist candidate. Among the contested tally sheets, 780 lack the signatures of the president and secretary of the polling station, 435 show numerical inconsistencies, 343 contain mismatched signatures, and 171 are missing the secretary’s signature.
The challenge to the validity of these records forced the CNE to suspend Tuesday’s hearing to review and proclaim the election results. CNE President Diana Atamaint stated that the review of the complaints will be swift, as the records submitted by Gonzalez will be compared with the data in the electoral system.
The former presidential candidate reaffirmed her allegation of electoral fraud, asserting that the CNE results are “impossible.” She also mentioned that the supposed presidential election results were not predicted by any prior polls nor by the two exit polls published after the closing of voting centers.
The Citizen Revolution has pointed out that it is inexplicable that Gonzalez’s vote count increased by only around 172,000 compared to the first round, while Noboa’s vote count rose by 1.13 million.
These increases are deemed improbable, given that both candidates were virtually tied in the February 9 vote, with a narrow difference of less than 17,000 votes.
teleSUR/ JF
Source: EFE
