With churros made and an illusion shattered, betrayed like a bride placed before the altar on the morning of her wedding: that’s how I stayed, that’s how thousands of Ecuadorian migrants stayed on voting day. Preparations done: ID card in hand, confirmed registration on the online voting portal, watched an informative video, read emails from embassies reminding us to exercise our right and duty to vote on August 20. The big day came, with a solemn and washed face in front of the computer (I knew the camera would do a virtual identification: it’s not the first time I’ve voted electronically), I opened the page, entered the ID number and that was it: “Error. There is a network problem, please type Ctrl+F5 or try a different web browser, if the problem persists, please contact customer support…”. The problem persisted across all my devices and browsers, hour after hour, over and over. I wrote to the support mail: “This address was not found.” Frustrated, I tweeted. I discovered that I was not alone, we were thousands of angry migrants at the failure of telematic voting. From Madrid, New York, Berlin and long etc. from places where the need to leave our country has catapulted us, a great chorus is lamenting and demanding that the National Electoral Council do its job: guarantee our right to vote. Its president, Diana Atamaint, lied (and blamed the victim): the portal works perfectly, we remind migrants that they must be registered to vote. And he lied again: We are solving the problem, by the end of election day all registered migrants will be able to vote. Reality: 123,854 migrants were registered to vote in this election, 51,643 (41.70%) managed to exercise their right to vote.

Journalist Janet Hinostroza stood up for us: “Migrants cannot vote abroad. A complete failure of telematic voting. They call and write to me from the USA, Spain, Colombia. @DianaAtamaint and @cnegobec must be held accountable for violating the right to choose of thousands of migrants”. Ecuadorian consulates around the world: silence (they have not yet expressed solidarity with the abuse that we migrants have been exposed to). Journalist Michelle Oquendo reminds the country that our right to vote is “written in the Constitution” (not a “favor or gift”) and asks: What will you do to guarantee the right of half a million migrants whose vote could change the fate of the second round? I appreciate the commitment of honest votes, but the second round discourages me: the same dead end as always. I wanted to vote on August 20, I had the “inalienable” right to vote and decide the fate of my country (to participate even to accept failure). I am a migrant, I live far away, but I have the right to decide the future of the country that depends on our remittances. I am a migrant, but Ecuador is the country of my parents, my grandparents, my nieces, my daughters. I am a migrant and it hurts me that the press of the country receiving me highlights my birthplace as “the most violent in the region”. I am a migrant, but I dream of the country to which I will return. (OR)