USR Challenges BEC’s Decision to Recount Presidential Votes in Court

USR has filed a complaint with the Bucharest Court of Appeal against the decision of the Central Electoral Bureau regarding the recount of votes from all polling stations in the country.

USR requests the annulment of the BEC decision and its suspension until the case is resolved. USR requests the Court of Appeal to shorten the procedural deadlines, so that both the submitted appeal and a possible appeal are resolved before December 6, when, according to the calendar in force, voting abroad for the second round of the presidential elections should begin, according to a press release.

“What is happening these days, with the totally unjustified decision to recount all votes in the country, instead of validating the results of the first round and starting the campaign for the second round, is a huge abuse, a direct attack on democracy in Romania and on the people’s vote. We oppose this abuse with the law in hand, as we have done every time. We cannot passively witness the desperate attempt of those who do not know how to lose to manipulate the election result so that a certain candidate is favored. It is precisely such steps that deepen people’s distrust in the functioning of state institutions and give wings to extremism, and all people of good faith must unite in defending the rules, laws and democracy,” said USR spokesperson Cristina Prună.

USR emphasizes that the BEC decision no. 205D/28 November 2024 is “illegal and must be annulled” for several reasons. One of these is that the CCR’s request to re-verify and recount all ballots “is outside the legal provisions”, specifies the cited source.

“In his request to annul the elections, Cristian Terheş invoked the continuation of the electoral campaign outside the campaign period, defects regarding the recording of the vote result from 3 polling stations out of a total of 19,000 stations, as well as the fact that the number of invalid votes (223,132 invalid votes) would be disproportionate in relation to the difference in votes between the candidates ranked in the first three places. However, a simple check of the minutes presented on the website of the Permanent Electoral Authority shows that the issues raised regarding the three polling stations are not confirmed”, the press release states.

As for the invalid votes, a comparison with the number of invalid votes registered in other elections shows that their percentage of the total number of votes “is now considerably lower” (2.36% in the first round of the presidential elections compared to 5.17% in the European Parliament elections in June 2024, respectively 2.88% in the local elections in June 2024), the same source states.

“As for the aspects regarding the continuation of the electoral campaign, these are, according to the law in force, punishable by a misdemeanor fine applied to the guilty persons and do not represent fraud within the meaning of the law. Therefore, the Constitutional Court had the legal possibility to request the BEC the information it holds or other necessary acts and documents, certainly not to ask the BEC to order an extended verification of all 9,000,000 ballot papers, outside the limits of the investment through the cancellation request”, the party reports.

USR adds that the BEC decision “was approved outside the legal framework”. Thus, based on the law, the BEC can order in a single scenario the recount of votes from a polling station or the restoration of the centralization of votes “only if it is found that errors have been committed or there are inconsistencies” between the data recorded in the minutes, the press release states.

“However, we recall that the BEC did not receive any appeals and approved the minutes regarding the election results. After this date, there is no longer a legal framework to order the recount of votes”, the aforementioned source specifies.

Thirdly, the deadlines set out in the BEC decision “violate” the provisions of GD 1061/2024 regarding the approval of the Calendar Program for the implementation of the necessary actions for the election of the President of Romania in 2024.

“The BEC decision stipulates that the re-verification of the results must be completed by December 1, 22:00, but GD 1061/2024 stipulates that the elections had to be validated and their results published in the media and the Official Gazette by November 28, 2024, so that the electoral campaign for the second round could begin on November 29,” USR also mentions.

The party notes that “there is no guarantee regarding the correctness” of the recount, given that “there is no certainty that no intervention was made – during the takeover, transport or after delivery – on the ballot papers”, which were transported to the court or remained in the county offices or consulates, in the case of polling stations abroad.

“We recall that the BEC decision results in the recount including votes found in bags whose seals were broken prior to receipt. At the same time, given that the offices will receive all the materials from the polling station, including the control stamps and the stamps with the mention “voted”, there is no guarantee that the sealed bags cannot be tampered with before the recount, there being the possibility of unsealing and resealing by applying the control stamp of the polling station”, claim the USR representatives.

It is also recalled that the initial vote count was carried out by over 100,000 people, under audio-video surveillance, in over 20,000 polling stations.

“Now, during the recount, each county electoral office will have to verify, recount and record an average of approximately 200,000 votes (9,000,000 votes/46 electoral offices), meaning a volume of votes approximately 200 times greater, in a very short period of time. Respectively, they would have to verify and process a number of over 4,300 votes/hour, without a break, for 2 days, in order to meet the deadlines set by the BEC. In addition to all this, the recount will be done without audio-video recording and in the absence of representatives of parties that do not have members in the electoral bureaus, observers and media representatives”, the press release states.

The “frauds” claimed by Terheș -errors already corrected in the minutes

The frauds that Cristian Terheș complained about at the Constitutional Court as an argument for the annulment of last Sunday’s presidential elections are actually errors in the recording of the voting results in the minutes, errors that were later corrected.

This is shown by the analysis of the minutes from the polling stations indicated by the MEP-candidate as a source of electoral fraud.

What Terheș did not say in his request for annulment is that the errors were corrected, including with the signatures of the representatives of his own party, the PNCR, in the voting commissions.

In addition, Elena Lasconi did not benefit from the “low” votes from Ludovic Orban, as Terheș claims, but rather Călin Georgescu, the candidate ranked first, because they were his.

In the request for annulment of the presidential elections submitted to the Constitutional Court, Cristian Terheș also gave several examples of polling stations – two in Bucharest and one in Mehedinți – where the number of votes attributed to Ludovic Orban had been changed downwards, i.e. decreased. In his opinion, this supports his thesis of election fraud.

“In the polling stations with the codes B-1278, B-954 and MH-179, candidate Ludovic Orban registered 85 votes, 38 votes and 36 votes respectively, while in the minutes regarding the recording of the voting results, only one vote was recorded for candidate Ludovic Orban,” Terheș’s request states.

According to him, from here “it follows that the process of “transferring” votes from a withdrawn candidate (Ludovic Orban – n.r.) to the candidate ranked second (Elena Lasconi – n.r.) obviously influenced the order of the candidates”.

However, checking the Permanent Electoral Authority website for the minutes from the polling stations mentioned by Cristian Terheș shows that things are not as he presents them.

First of all, the votes lost by Ludovic Orban did not go to Elena Lasconi, but to the candidate in first place, Călin Georgescu. Indeed, there are differences between the first (provisional) and the second (final) versions of the minutes from the respective polling stations, but the number of votes received by Elena Lasconi did not change.

At the MH-179 polling station, in Gogoșu commune, Mehedinți, in the V1 (provisional) version of the minutes with the voting results, there are differences between the handwritten minutes and the general electronic system minutes: in the first, Ludovic Orban has 1 vote, Călin Georgescu – 36, and in the second, Ludovic Orban has 36 votes and Călin Georgescu – 2 (as can be seen, the two candidates are one below the other in the table).

Later, the members of the polling station found that this was a data entry error and made the correction in the final version (V2) of the minutes, clearly mentioning this. In fact, according to them, it was a shift in the rows of the table, which caused Călin Georgescu’s votes to reach Ludovic Orban