About 250,000 ballot papers are missing in the Excel table of the Central Electoral Bureau regarding the provisional results of the local elections in Bucharest.
In District 1 where the Save Bucharest Union candidate, Clotilde Armand unsuccessfully challenged the elections after losing the mayor seat to Social Democrat candidate by only several percent, over 10,000 ballot papers are missing from the BEC website, Gandul daily reports.
The disparities show up in polling stations in every district of the Capital city and for the mayor, local and general councils’ seats.
The above-mentioned source says that in many cases, the number of the cast votes summed up with the one of the annulled votes and with the unused papers does not correspond to the number of the ballot papers received by those polling stations.
At five in six polling stations where the contradictions are high in District 1, USB candidate Clotilde Armand lost to PSD candidate Dan Tudorache.
However, the highest discrepancy in Bucharest is found in District 4 in a polling station where almost 23,000 ballot papers are out of reckoning.
Overall, there are hundreds of polling stations in Bucharest whose figures regarding the ballot papers are not matching in the BEC table.
A BEC member told Gandul that it could be an error when the figures have been introduced in the table.
The number of votes cast by the citizens added up to the annulled votes and to the unused ballot papers doesn’t correspond or is less than the ballot papers received by the polling stations.
Overall, over 250,000 ballot papers are undercharge compared to the received ballot papers at the beginning of the voting procedure.
In some polling stations, there are also additional ballot papers on BEC table. There are over 600 cases in 4,000 where there are undercharge or additional errors. This means that in those 1,252 polling stations in Bucharest, one or more categories of ballot papers are out of reckoning in the Excel table on the BEC website.
Protest for Clotilde
A protest will be staged in the University Square on Saturday, in support for Clotilde Armand, where participtants will ask for a vote recount in the District 1 elections. The USB candidate lost to Social Democrat Dan Tudorache although Sunday’s exit polls presented her as the winner of the district mayor seat.
Several hundreds people showed their interest to attend the protest.
“We’ll see you on Saturday at 15:00 to defend the rule of law. The democratic process is compromised if the way if voting is defrauded. We urgently ask for the votes’ recount to keep the integrity of the democratic process(…),” reads the announcement, ziare.com reports.