OAS recognizes election results and says its ballot review eliminates ‘ink transfer’ fraud

The election observation team of the Organization of American States has officially recognized President Daniel Noboa’s victory in the April 13 runoff election. In its final report on the election, the OAS said Ecuador’s elections “continue to be among the best managed and most transparent” in Latin America.

The OAS election observer teams called Ecuador’s presidential runoff results “accurate and transparent.”

Earlier in the month, European Union and European Parliament observers validated the election results.

In its report, the OAS said it carried out hundreds of random comparisons of ballots with results posted on voting station tally sheets and found no major discrepancies. The team also checked computer results against the tally sheet totals, “Our process is very thorough and is intended to validate beyond a reasonable doubt the election results.”

The OAS said there “a small number of human counting mistakes” but these did not affect the final outcome.

In an addendum to its report, the OAS said its review found no indication that final vote count was affected by ink used to mark ballots. “On a very few ballots we observed ink smudges and smears but this did not affect the final count and certainly did transfer votes from one candidate to the other.”

The comment was in response to claims by the Citizens Revolution campaign that “ink transfers” changed votes for Luisa Gonzalez to Noboa. The RC claimed that the ink offset, which they called “inkswap,” was part of the “massive fraud” that led to Gonzalez’s defeat.