Argentina's Fernandez cries foul on government primary vote count

[Judi Lynn]

AUGUST 30, 2017 / 5:55 PM / 5 HOURS AGO


BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina’s former populist leader Cristina Fernandez criticized President Mauricio Macri’s government at a rally on Wednesday, after it took more than two weeks to release final results in a Senate primary race that gave her a razor-thin win.

Fernandez won the primary in Buenos Aires province, Argentina’s largest. She edged out President Mauricio Macri’s preferred candidate Esteban Bullrich 33.95 percent versus 33.74 percent.

Before announcing the final count late on Tuesday, the government had last published results in the province on Monday Aug. 14 with 95.68 percent of polling stations counted. At that time Bullrich, Macri’s former education minister, had a 0.08 percent lead over Fernandez.

“This is the first time that the person who won the provisional count did not win the definitive count,” Fernandez told thousands of cheering fans in La Plata, the capital of Buenos Aires province.

More:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-argentina-election-idUSKCN1BA30N?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Reuters%2FworldNews+%28Reuters+World+News%29&&rpc=401

[sandensea]

1. It's so bad precinct captains are being urged to compare the online summaries with their own records

They've found 270 precincts (there could be some 1,500) where her party got "zero" votes - but with large gaps in the vote count.

The precinct summaries in these cases are showing up with around 250 to 300 as "total votes cast" (which is normal) - but with only around 100 to 150 as "sum of votes for all parties." Kirchner's United Citizens consistently shows up as blank, or with zero votes.

Up to 120,000 votes could have been stolen this way (she won by 20,000 nevertheless).

Her party is suing to have the records audited - as well as the cloud computing services used to compile the precinct summaries, since the image files could have been electronically altered even by hackers outside Argentina and then submitted as "official."

This would make even Cheeto blush.