PAC Alleges Irregularities in Recount
By Rebecca Kimitch
Tico Times Staff
rkimitch@ticotimes.net

Ballots left behind in polling places, invalid signatures and missing voter lists are among the more than 100 complaints that have been filed in recent days by the Citizen Action Party (PAC) regarding the Feb. 5 election and ongoing manual recount of votes.

Judging by the number of complaints that must be investigated and addressed and the pace of the manual recount, it could be two weeks before the Supreme Elections Tribunal (TSE) declares either PAC's Ottón Solís or National Liberation Party (PLN) candidate Oscar Arias as President, TSE magistrate Luis Antonio Sobrado told the press yesterday.

Yesterday, TSE workers completed counting all votes from the province of San José and have now moved on to Alajuela, northwest of San José. At this pace, Sobrado estimates the recount will be completed late next week, although he said he could make no promises. Once the recount is complete, parties have three days to present more claims of irregularities. They too must be investigated before an official winner can be declared in this historically close election in which Arias has a preliminary lead of fractions of a percentage point.

TSE officials have already begun to investigate various complaints filed by PAC, including questions regarding several votes found by teachers under school desks in polling precincts the day after the elections and uncertainties regarding the whereabouts of a bag of ballots as it traveled to San José.

TSE president Oscar Fonseca minimized Tuesday questions regarding the found ballots, calling such issues “normal” in the course of an election. Sobrado agreed yesterday that the majority of the mistakes highlighted by the complaints are the result of “human errors, not anything deeper.”

But PAC legislator Rodrigo Carazo, who is serving as a one of the official recount observers representing PAC, said the errors he has seen during the manual recount are emblematic of a systematic problem in Costa Rica 's electoral system.

“A system that should be perfect is not, and the Tribunal realizes this and it frightens them; but they can't find a way to accept that in such a close election these issues are very serious,” he told The Tico Times.

For decades, Costa Ricans have prided themselves on their democratic and transparent electoral system. Since the historically close elections Feb. 5, many people, including the Catholic Church and the National Rectors Council, have announced their trust that TSE will announce the correct winner in due time.

However, Carazo says it may be time to take a second look at the country's electoral system.

“It is a system that has deteriorated, that has eroded,” he said.

Carazo has been one of the most vocal observers during the manual counting process, making dozens of claims of irregularities. Each party that participated in the elections is allowed one observer at each of the five counting tables, which are headed up by one of the five TSE magistrates.

One of the primary problems Carazo said he has observed is ballots arriving from polling places without the attached list of people who voted. In these situations, TSE employees are correctly adding up the votes, but they have nothing to compare the totals with to indicate whether they received the appropriate number of ballots, Carazo explained. This has happened with dozens of polling places, he said.

However, Liberation observer Luis París said that in the counting he has observed, he has seen no such problems. He suggested PAC is desperately trying to find more votes where they don't exist, and in the end are only hurting the process.

“PAC is damaging the democratic institutions of the country,” he said. “With these declarations that there is no transparency, that there is electoral fraud, they are doing serious damage to Costa Rica and the Supreme Elections Tribunal. This is politics, and politics from a bad school.”