Colombia’s national registrar requested more election officials on Tuesday from the Superior Council of the Judiciary to recount the votes in the election for the Valle del Cauca department’s Governor’s Office.
National Registrar Carlos Ariel Sanchez asked 64 election officials from the judicial council “to create sub-committees of counters, so that eventually they can give the recount, one by one, of the deposited votes.”
The Liberal Party requested a recount in the Valle del Cauca governor election after their candidate lost by less than 1% of the votes.
With 98.40% of the votes counted, Liberal Party candidate Jorge Homero Giraldo received 32.62% with 441,303 votes, while Hector Fabio Useche from the “Inclusion and Opportunities Movement,” or MIO Party, received 446,810 votes, which represents 33.02%.
The controversy of Useche extends beyond his incredibly close win. Backed by the MIO Party, Useche was also heavily supported by one of the most notorious parapoliticians in Colombia, former Senator Juan Carlos Martinez.
Martinez, who is currently serving a 7.5 year sentence in Barranquilla for his ties to the umbrella paramilitary organization AUC, endorsed hundreds of candidates for mayor, governor, and councilor across the country.