Due to the problems registered, the CNE annulled the vote and the Ecuadorian migrants will have to return to the polls to elect assembly members.
Aída Quinatoa, an Ecuadorian migrant in Spain, told her testimony about the telematic vote. Madrid, August 30, 2023.
“We fight for the vote to later change Ecuador,” says the indigenous and migrant Aída Quinatoa, who is part of the thousands of Ecuadorian migrants registered with the National Electoral Council (CNE) who could not vote electronically in the August 20 elections. due to failures in the electronic system.
In fact, due to these rulings, on August 25 the CNE annulled the presidential and legislative votes and decided that the vote for representatives to the National Assembly (Parliament) be repeated by the constituencies abroad, but considered that it was not necessary to organize new elections among emigrants to elect the president , since a repetition of this vote would not affect the general result of the presidential elections, which left two candidates for the second round, the correísta Luisa González and the businessman Álvaro Noboa.
In statements to the EFE news agency, Quinatoa along with other colleagues say that they migrated to Spain more than 20 years ago due to the “economic crisis” in their country, but they stress that despite the thousands of kilometers that They part with Ecuador “feel a responsibility to vote”, because for them “there are many things that must change, but voting is the first step to achieve it.”
“Voting was stressful”
Ecuadorian migrants agree that the voting process was very “stressful.” “The page was blocked and many of us were like this from 10:00 to 19:00″, explains Gladys Domínguez, who on the day of the vote met at home with her compatriots to support each other, since it was the first time that the Ecuadorian population abroad cast a telematic vote.
Quinatoa regretted that, in addition to technical failures, there is a digital divide that makes this type of vote “exclusive” if people are not trained first.
According to the CNE -the highest suffrage body in Ecuador- more than 400,000 citizens were eligible to vote abroad, of which 123,854 registered on the Electoral Council’s computer platform to exercise their vote and only 51,643 were able to register it correctly .
Doubts about security
Regarding the CNE resolution, Quinatoa -who participated in these elections as an assembly candidate in the constituency of Europe, Oceania, Asia for the Pachakutik Plurinational Unity Movement- comments that “the nullity of the vote does not guarantee that there will be safe elections without hackers ” , referring to the cyberattacks that the director of the CNE, Diana Atamaint, declared that they were presented in the telematic system on the day of the vote from countries such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Russia, Ukraine, Indonesia and China.
For the candidate, “how this security system is safeguarded is an institutional issue,” and points out that the fundamental thing is that the citizen be “assured” to “exercise their human right to be able to vote.”
“It is typified in the Constitution. Migrants are one more province and, therefore, we have that right, as if we were in Ecuador”, he says. Ecuadorians who are outside their country have the right to elect six representatives for the constituencies abroad.
Quinatoa concludes that this “exclusion from voting” is “outrageous.”
