TSE Continues Counting Votes
From Sunday's Election
By Amanda Roberson
Tico Times Staff
aroberson@ticotimes.net

Supreme Elections Tribunal (TSE) officials yesterday continued the tedious process of manually counting each vote from Sunday's presidential elections as Costa Ricans remained uncertain who would emerge as their next President in the close race between National Liberation Party (PLN) candidate Oscar Arias and Citizen Action Party (PAC) candidate Ottón Solis.

TSE President Oscar Fonseca told journalists around noon yesterday that elections officials had manually counted 395 of the 712 voting precincts that were not included in initial tallies given at 3:15 Monday. Elections officials began the manual count required by law Tuesday morning with these 712 voting precincts and will then continue to recount votes from the remaining 5,451 precincts by hand. TSE has, by law, up to 30 days to complete the recount and officially declare the winner.

Fonseca also told journalists yesterday TSE would post the most recent counts on the Tribunal's Web site, www.tse.go.cr, every day at 9 p.m. until votes from the 712 precincts are counted.

The Tribunal could continue posting results every day as officials recount the rest of the votes, said TSE spokesman Cedric Solano, but officials have not decided yet whether they will use this method or give the results to journalists at the end of each day. In any case, TSE is required to make each day's count public, Solano said.

This year's narrow margin between the top two candidates makes the recount especially important, Fonseca said.

TSE officials work in five tables, each composed of 12 to 14 elections officials and overseen by a Tribunal magistrate who is appointed by a Supreme Court magistrate (TT Online, Feb. 8). Official observers representing five different political parties also watch over the process.

Though TSE officials initially planned to count from 8 a.m.-6 p.m., yesterday TSE extended the schedule to 8 a.m.-8 p.m. and added Saturdays to expedite the process, Solano said.

Meanwhile, Arias and Solís have expressed different opinions regarding the vote-counting process. Arias wants the counting finished as soon as possible and said if he were President of TSE he would ask workers to continue counting past 8 p.m., even if that meant not sleeping, so that the winner is known as soon as possible, according to the daily La Nación. Counting votes slowly and making the country wait produces uncertainty and sends a message to the world that Costa Rica is incapable of producing fast election results, Arias said.

Solís, however, adopted a more patient approach as he spent Tuesday afternoon with his wife, sister and three daughters at San José's Children's Museum, reported La Nación. The PAC candidate also sent Fonseca a letter congratulating him for listening to pleas made by his vice presidential candidate Epsy Campbell Tuesday asking that preliminary counts not be released until all votes were manually recounted.

Campbell 's request seems to have been at least somewhat heeded by TSE officials. Rather than giving journalists a new tally showing which candidate was ahead Tuesday night, they gave them the results of the 250 precincts counted that day in chart form, without adding them to Monday's tally.

“I think your intervention gives citizens the necessary space for you, your officials and the political parities to complete this electoral process successfully,” Solís' letter read.

The nonprofit Transparency International Costa Rica (TICR), however, remained unsatisfied with the counting process yesterday as the group continued pressuring Tribunal magistrates to allow them to observe, said TICR President Roxana Salazar.

Fonseca told journalists Tuesday that, by law, no outside observers are allowed to watch over the recount process.