Elections 2023: when is a vote considered void in Ecuador?

This Sunday, February 5, Ecuadorians will have to vote among various lists and candidates for the sectional elections 2023. The dignities that will be elected are prefects, mayors, urban and rural councillors, parish councils and members of the Council for Citizen Participation and Social Control, in addition to the referendum proposed by President Guillermo Lasso.

When going to the polls, citizens will receive a total of seven ballots, if they vote in urban areas, and eight ballots if they belong to rural areas. For their vote to be considered valid, voters must clearly mark a single option. Their vote is irretrievably nullified if the voter checks for multiple lists or candidates.

The vote is also considered invalid when any other drawing, mark, scribble or word is made on the ballot. If, on the other hand, the citizen does not make any mark on the ballot and leaves it blank, it is considered a blank vote.

The total number of dignities to choose in the 2023 sectional elections of Ecuador

Art. 126 of the Organic Electoral Law indicates that they will be considered as invalid votes:

• 1. Those that contain marks for more than one candidate or, depending on the case, a pairing, in one-person elections.
• 2. When the voter marks more than one list in multi-person elections or expresses her preference for candidates between lists.
• 3. Those that carry the words “null” or “annulled”, or other similar ones, or those that have erasures that clearly demonstrate the will to annul the vote.

Null and blank votes are not added to any given candidate or list, nor are they counted in declaring winners. However, if the number of null votes exceeds the total number of valid votes, the election is declared null. In other words, more than 6.5 million null votes (50% of voters plus one) would be needed for the electoral process to be declared invalid.

(YO)