The ghost of the null vote puts the National Electoral Council to think

Ecuadornews:

What was considered unlikely until last week, yesterday began to take shape. To the National Electoral Council (CNE for its acronym in spanish) another unforeseen event appeared on the road to only 25 days for the sectional elections and the Council for Citizen Participation and Social Control (CPCCS).

In the electoral body it is still unclear what steps should be taken if eventually in the selection of the seven members of the CPCCS the null vote on the positives is imposed. The concern increases because more social and political actors are joining the proposal to invalidate the vote.

The leader of the CREO movement, Guillermo Lasso, yesterday urged his militancy to annul the vote “because that delegitimizes that election and as soon as we see the results of that ballot, President Lenin Moreno must call a popular consultation to withdraw definitively to the Council of Citizen Participation, “he said.

Other political actors, such as the mayor of Guayaquil, Jaime Nebot, have not made public their position on how to vote in this election, but they have expressed their agreement for the CPCCS to be eliminated.

The Code of Democracy contemplates the possibility that the null votes exceed the votes of all the candidates or the respective lists in a given circumscription, for each dignity, in which case “the nullity of the elections will be declared” .

However, CNE counselor Luis Verdesoto said yesterday that this case is different because it is not about lists of candidates, but about a single-member election (with only one name). The situation is complicated because there will be three ballots: one for women, one for men and a third for peoples and nationalities.

What will happen if the null wins on one of the three and not on the remaining ballots? All these eventualities should be discussed by the CNE on the fly to give answers when there are official results.

“I have asked the president to convene in the shortest time a plenary session to address these issues and we can discuss how the accounting will be done and what the null votes mean,” said the vowel.

The president of the CNE, Diana Atamaint, prefers not to advance criteria before this possible scenario and does not rule out sending to the Attorney General the necessary consultations to clarify the procedures.

The counselor José Cabrera considers that the law also gives the solution when an election is declared void and indicates that the CNE, in ten days, may order that the elections be repeated. But the norm refers to parishes and electoral zones and not to a national election like this one.

Verdesoto is not in favor of going to the Attorney General’s Office. He believes that it must be solved by the CNE and the representatives of the political organizations.

Measure

A group of candidates for the Council declares itself in resistance

The answer: resistance. A group of aspirants to the Council of Citizen Participation and Social Control accepted this right enshrined in Article 98 of the Constitution, considering that their right to participate is being violated. This is in response to an initiative of the CREO movement and its leader Guillermo Lasso that promotes the null vote for the new and definitive dignities to the Participation Council that will be elected on March 24.

To say of the candidates, the initiative seeks to delegitimize the future Council to have an argument that endorses its extinction through a referendum.

However, they explained that a change like that should be executed with the convocation to a constituent assembly.

Joba Fon Fay, Teddy Tama, Francisco Bravo, Monica Moreira, Hernan Ulloa, Sergio Figueroa, Carlos Tuárez, Franklin Moreno, among others, expressed their rejection of this initiative and said they feel relegated by the National Electoral Council, which they question for a little effective promotion of their candidacies. In addition, another of the agreements is to ask the media for the right to reply when they give space to spokespersons to promote the null vote in the election of the Council of Citizen Participation.

The request of the candidates had the support of social organizations that announced that they will sue Guillermo Lasso before the National Electoral Council for allegedly violating the right to participation. (I)

Source: https://www.expreso.ec/actualidad/cne-elecciones-seccionales-voto-nulo-CA2662613