The head of Peru’s National Election Jury (JNE), a body that evaluates disputes regarding ballots and other vote technicalities, told reporters this weekend that her office expects to be able to offer the nation the complete results of the April 12 election by mid-May.
The JNE does not do the first round of vote-counting – the National Electoral Processes Office (ONPE) does. ONPE has finished counting about 80 percent of ballots nationwide at press time, presenting extremely close results on its website. At press time, conservative former first lady Keiko Fujimori holds about 17 percent of the vote, leading radical leftist candidate Roberto Helbert Sanchez Palomino at 12 percent. Conservative former mayor of Lima Rafael Bernando Lopez Aliaga holds about 11.9 percent of the vote, followed by Jorge Nieto Montesinos at 11 percent.
In Peru, a candidate must receive at least 50 percent of the vote to be elected president in a first round of voting. If no candidate reaches the 50-percent threshold, the top two candidates go on to a runoff election, which is why the three-way race for second place is so important in a competition with no overwhelming frontrunner. The runoff election is expected to take place on June 7.
This year’s election was preceded by one of the most chaotic political eras in Peruvian history in which the country has been run by nine different presidents in ten years. The election featured 35 candidates on the ballot in April, fragmenting both left-wing and right-wing voting blocs. In addition to the large number of choices on the ballot, a significant percentage of voting stations, particularly in Lima, reported irregularities such as running out of ballots, disenfranchising voters. Election authorities extended voting for one day to allow for the printing and distribution of ballots, but some candidates have nonetheless argued that the delay discouraged some from voting and irredeemably marred the results, demanding a new election.
In an interview with weekend with Radio Programas Perú (RPP), Yessica Clavijo, the JNE secretary-general, indicated that voters will have to wait weeks for the final results of the election even after the ONPE completes its voting due to the need to verify votes and resolve disputed ballots.
“We are expecting by about halfway into May to have, at least, the presidential results, which is what we need to determine the runoff,” Clavijo explained. She shared that the JNE had resolved only ten percent of disputed ballots and appeared to suggest that the length of the delay would depend on how long ONPE takes to share the ballots in question.
“Let us remember that these ballots are coming physically. We must scan them, generate the respective documents, proceed with the analysis, generate resolutions, validly notify of them,” she explained, until the ballots in question are returned to ONPE to be counted or not.
The ballots in question, she explained, are those “with some material error, some arithmetic error, lack of information, lack of signature in some cases.”
“The risk is that they promptly send us the observed ballots,” she reiterated, putting the onus of the delay on ONPE: “so we need that the ONPE immediately send us the ballots.”
The Special Electoral Jury, which verifies questioned ballots in some particular cases, has been livestreaming its vote tallies online.
At press time, the top two candidates to head to a runoff appear to be Fujimori, who has not lost the lead during the counting process so far, and Roberto Sánchez Palomino of the left-wing Together for Peru party. Sánchez served as trade and tourism minister under former President Pedro Castillo, an avowed Leninist who was arrested and impeached for attempting a coup d’etat by illegally dissolving Congress in 2022. Sánchez has publicly defended Castillo and claimed that his arrest, and not his abuse of power, was the true “coup.” He is also calling for rewriting the Peruvian constitution to make it more amenable to leftist causes.
Fujimori is a four-time presidential candidate and the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, a polarizing figure who ended the Marxist Shining Path terrorist insurgency in the 1990s but was widely accused of human rights abuses and abuses of power during his tenure. Keiko Fujimori, a senator, served as her father’s first lady during his divorce from her mother, Susana Higuchi, who later ran for president against Alberto Fujimori.
Keiko Fujimori has consistently run campaigns promising an unforgiving campaign against domestic crime and conservative economic policies to revive the Peruvian economy. Her political career has survived a host of family scandals, from her childhood with her father to an arrest on corruption charges in 2018.
The former mayor of Lima, Rafael López Aliaga, appeared headed to a runoff against Fujimori during much of the counting of votes this year, but slowly dropped and remains narrowly in the race. Last week, outraged by delays and irregularities in the vote, López held a rally demanding that the ONPE “declare this rubbish null and void” and hold another election. His comments, including threats to “convene” masses of people in protest, prompted a group of lawyers to file a criminal complaint against López, accusing him of attempting to stage a “civil uprising.”
On Monday, López called for election authorities to allow people to vote for president once again on May 3 to give those who missed out another opportunity to cast a ballot. Reports did not indicate that he suggested how to ensure that no voters successfully submit a second ballot.
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