The Baja California State Electoral Institute (IEEBC) will formally request the National Electoral Institute (INE) an extension to deliver the recent election results in Tijuana, according to a SanDiegoRed.com source.

Irregularities present during the election, interruptions during the official count and the election volunteers’ lack of training made this process a real challenge for election authorities in Tijuana’s Eleventh and Twelve districts, particularly when it came to mayoral candidates. Thus, the state’s Electoral Institute is now asking for an extension on the deadline imposed on them by the INE.

Even then, an annulment or extraordinary election to choose Tijuana’s mayor is out of the question, given that the cost of repeating the process in the city would cost the state an extra 200 million pesos. The Institute insists that the only thing needed is to finalize the official count in a proper way, and to learn from this year’s mistakes.

Tuesday, June 14 is the legal deadline for the IEEBC to announce the election’s official winners. Tijuana is the only city in Baja California where this process is still ongoing, even if it had a smaller percentage of irregularities than Ensenada or Rosarito.

Preliminary results showed that Juan Manuel Gastélum, the National Action Party (PAN) candidate for Tijuana’s mayor position, was the winner by a hair-thin margin. However, fraud accusations coming from the Social Encounter Party (PES) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) four-way coalition immediately put these results into question.

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oscar.montoya@sandiegored.com

Translated by axel.alcala@sandiegored.com