Votes without recalibrating
You cannot reclassify a vote or discuss its reclassification in the new vote count. A decision that is key for political parties, since there are voices that assure that there were votes that were marked as valid despite the fact that they conflict with the Court’s rules.
Others maintain that there were votes that were marked as null, when they should not have been classified that way. However, being able to correct some of these indications may not be possible in the new count.
Altered ballots
He official instructions of the TSE indicates that the vote must be marked with a black crayon given by the members of the voting station. But a large number of ballots obtained from electoral packets are marked with black marker. Many more do not have the fold that they wear when they enter the polls.
Two facts that for at least four political parties, including the traditionalists ARENA and FMLN, leave the electoral results without a guarantee of transparency.
“The electoral boxes come with crayons to mark the ballots when voting,” explains the candidate for legislator, César Reyes, from the ARENA party. “The ballots marked with marker and without any folding are all in favor of New Ideas,” he denounced.
Nuevas Ideas is the official party of President Nayib Bukele. In his February 4 speech where he proclaimed himself the winner, Bukele said that his party had won 58 of 60 seats in the Legislative Assembly. Some results not made official by the Court.
The ballots with alleged alterations appeared in the electoral boxes from La Unión and San Vicente, but the worst is expected in the departments of La Libertad and San Salvador.
Ballot boxes with extra votes
There are complaints of Vote Receiving Boards in the department of Cabañas and La Unión with more marked ballots than assigned voters.
Claudia Ortiz, current deputy and candidate for VAMOS, has asked to compare the detachable corners of the ballots with the signature registers. This is to verify that the number of ballots contained in the electoral boxes match the signature records of the people who went to vote.
But the electoral expert, Ruth López, who is at the site of the final scrutiny, has denounced that the counting tables do not compare the detachable corners with the signature registers, a fact that she describes as serious, since this is the way, according to López , which the TSE has to guarantee that this JRV does not contain extra ballots.
Results transmission site not working
Although the Electoral Tribunal has already completed the scrutiny in 6 of the 14 departments of El Salvador, the results are not yet available on the entity’s website.
Since the polls closed on February 4, the TSE has experienced errors in the results transmission site. For example, there were minutes that contained duplicate or triplicate data in some departments on election day. This caused the TSE to take down the website since then.
Magistrates withdraw from the process
Four of five substitute judges of the TSE they disassociated themselves from the electoral process in a letter they sent to the titular magistrates.
“We clearly state that we are no longer in a position to accept decisions and actions that have not been legally and correctly issued by the Plenary, as well as declarations and commitments that have not been legally taken, much less taken unilaterally,” said René Molina, Carmen Velásquez, María Paz and Sonia Liévano de Lemus.
According to the letter, the magistrates warned on January 25, a week before the elections, that they were “in an irremediable crisis”, since the General Election Plan (PLAGEL) had been altered as planned.
The plan contains the organization of the electoral process. So problems that were not resolved at the end of January could only result in a crisis on voting day.
Noel Orellana, the owner magistrate, was the only one who gave journalistic statements in this regard. The official said that he was not “loyal” either to the institution or to the regular magistrates in the decision of the substitutes to “criticize” or “want to tarnish the electoral process.” He avoided referring to the flaws in the process. The rest of the magistrates hide or are “hidden” by an army of bodyguards
What are the results so far?
Until February 13, the tables installed in the National Gymnasium, under the control of Nuevas Ideas, have delivered 12 of the 13 seats scrutinized by the Electoral Tribunal in six departments. One of the seats went to the National Concertation Party (PCN), a submissive ally of the Government of Nayib Bukele.
Achieving an absolute majority in the Legislative Assembly will allow Bukele to continue extending his main security policy: the emergency regime, which was his main card in the last elections.
Although there has not been a collegiate position on the complaints made by independent observers and opposition political parties during the final scrutiny, the proprietary magistrate, Julio Olivo, sent a letter to the organization in which he urged that the complaints of data manipulation.