Ecuador’s Electoral Council Director Denies Electoral Fraud

The director of the National Electoral Council (CNE) in Guayas, Jhonatan Gamboa, denied on Friday the claims of alleged electoral fraud in the subnational elections of last Sunday.

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"In the electoral delegation of Guayas, no parallel center has been installed to print additional minutes as they maliciously pretend to believe," said the director of the CNE in a video.

Gamboa strongly rejected "the infamous and malicious accusations made by the councilors of the National Electoral Council against me, as well as the illegal detention of officials of the provincial electoral delegation of Guayas."

According to the official, "the security of the scrutiny system" does not allow the printing of new minutes or the modification of the data. "At no time has the will of the people been violated, nor has any criminal act been carried out to benefit or harm anyone," said Gamboa.

Our authorities announced from the @CNEGuayas the actions taken to continue with the activities inherent to the recount and processing of the minutes of the Elections 2023 Ecuador.

Gamboa's statements came as the day before, the CNE asked the Attorney General's Office to investigate an alleged parallel counting center in the province of Guayas, alleging duplicity in the tally sheets.

The CNE director said that Guayas obtained 27 200 tally sheets with novelty due to numerical inconsistencies. In this regard, Gamboa said that "the procedure for filling out the tally sheets was modified," in order to finish this process as quickly as possible and proceed to the notification of the results.

This in the face of pressure from the electoral authorities, among them "the vice-president of the National Electoral Council, engineer Enrique Pita, together with his work team and the president of the provincial board," said Gamboa.