El Salvador election results delayed

By Stefano Pozzebon and Martin Goillandeau, CNN

(CNN) — El Salvador’s Supreme Electoral Court on Monday said it had asked polling stations across the country to manually record the results of Sunday’s presidential election after electronic transmission of results stopped updating overnight at around 31%.

The court’s decision could delay the announcement of what is expected to be a landslide victory for Nayib Bukele, who declared himself the winner in a statement on X on Sunday night. Bukele had secured nearly 1.3 million votes – well ahead of the second-place candidate – according to the latest electronic count before it stalled.

The court said it took its decision based on the country’s electoral code and after actions that “hindered” the transmission of primary results and “other factors beyond the control of the (court),” without elaborating further.

Polling stations will now have to manually report voting records, with both election officials and party representatives taking “photographic or scanned evidence” of the records before sending them to the court.

Bukele, 42, was widely expected to win reelection. He faced little in the way of organized opposition and enjoys one of the highest favorability ratings in the region, regularly polling above 70% in independent surveys.

His supporters trumpet a crackdown on criminal gangs in the country that resulted in a dramatic fall in the murder rate, once the highest in the world.

However, mass arrests have also triggered outcry from human rights groups, who allege Bukele’s government has detained innocent people and subjected prisoners to dehumanizing conditions behind bars, including torture. El Salvador now has the world’s highest incarceration rate.

The debate between the two sides has elevated an election in a small Central American state into a broader referendum on the extent that voters are willing to relinquish basic liberties in exchange for relative peace and safety.

A lopsided win for Bukele would likely give the young leader more leeway to reform El Salvador in his heavy-handed vision. Bukele has not shied away from comparisons to autocrats – once setting his Twitter biography to read “world’s coolest dictator” – and his government has said they are “eliminating” democracy in the country.

Bukele’s ability to run for a second term is a clear example of the effort: with El Salvador’s constitution barring presidents from seeking re-election, the country’s Congress in 2021 replaced the top judges on the Supreme Court with a new class willing to grant him the power.

CNN’s David Shortell contributed to this report

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