Expat candidate has doubts about overnight turnaround in Bucharest’s District 1 mayor elections
French businesswoman Clotilde Armand was leading in the exit-polls after the mayor elections in Bucharest’s District 1 on Sunday evening, June 5. However, on Monday morning she found that she probably lost the elections to social democrat Dan Tudorache.
The overnight turnaround raises questions about the vote counting process, Armand said in a Facebook post on Monday. She ran in the District 1 local elections for Save Bucharest Union (USB), a recently launched party, coordinated by activist Nicusor Dan, who ran for Bucharest mayor on Sunday. Nicusor Dan also lost to the Social Democratic Party – PSD’s candidate Gabriela Firea, but by a wider margin.
Clotilde Armand, however, was very close to producing the biggest surprise in this year’s local elections, as all the exit-polls showed her in front of the PSD candidate in the District 1 elections by 1-2 percentage points. Even the first partial results announced by the Central Electoral Bureau (BEC) around midnight placed her in front by a narrow margin (32.37% for Clotilde Armand and 31.91% for Dan Tudorache).
On Monday morning, the official results told a different story. Clotilde Armand fell to second place, with 28.7% of the votes, while Dan Tudorache took the lead, with 31.2%.
“This turnaround throws the shadow of doubt on the correctness of the vote counting and registration process at the polling stations. The simple fact that such a doubt appears, 26 years since the democratic process started in Romania, puts the country in a negative light,” Clotilde Armand said.
“I’m convinced that the Central Electoral Bureau will do its job. I think that in 2016 Romania the electoral pressure and defrauding methods have been left behind,” she added.
Her party, Save Bucharest Union (USB), led by, didn’t have the resources to send members or observers in all of the polling stations in District 1. Apparently, Armand’s opponent won exactly in the polling stations that where USB was not represented.
“In District 1 there were 163 polling stations. We had representatives in 126 stations. In these stations, Clotilde Armand won 76 votes more than her main opponent (an average of 0.6 votes ahead per station). We didn’t have delegates in 36 stations. In these places, the PSD candidate won 1,755 votes more than our candidate (an average of 46 votes extra per station),” Nicusor Dan, a former mathematics Olympic performer wrote on Facebook. He didn’t comment on these numbers.
Nicusor Dan said that his party has asked for a vote recount in "five to ten polling stations", where statistical anomalies were spotted in the results.
editor@romania-insider.com
