Correa Asks to Count until the Last Vote before Enacting Second Round

‘It is never over until it is over. Let the last vote be counted,’ Correa said through his Twitter account, shortly after the National Electoral Council (CNE) announced that with 94.6 percent of the votes counted, Moreno accounted for 39.20 percent of the valid ballots and Lasso, 28.37.

According to the head of the CNE, Juan Pablo Pozo, the trend that indicates the possibility of a second round ‘is marked’, but clarified that it will be necessary to conclude the scrutiny of 100 percent of the votes to proclaim the second round.

Correa also referred to this possibility, and said in another of his ‘tweets’ that ‘if there is a second round, we will defeat them again.’

The Ecuadorian electoral law states that in order to win a presidential election in the first round, it is necessary for the front-runner candidate to reach 50 percent plus one of the votes, or at least 40 percent of the votes and a 10-point margin over the second-placed candidate.

The president also hinted at the possibility that some ‘crooked hand’ has infiltrated the electoral body to delay the count.

Incentives to violence and social disorder have grown, despite reiterated calls from national authorities and international observers for calm and waiting for the definitive data, which will dictate whether another voting round is needed to elect the next president of the nation.