Summary
Romania’s Constitutional Court has ordered a recount of the November 24 presidential election after far-right candidate Calin Georgescu unexpectedly won the first round, despite polling below 5% beforehand.
Georgescu, critical of NATO and supportive of Russia’s Putin, will face centrist Elena Lasconi in a December 8 runoff.
The court rejected an application to annul the election, citing a missed deadline.
The decision comes amid reports of cyberattacks and allegations of TikTok of favoring the far-right candidate.
Recounts generally only correct for errors in vote counting - if different systems are used (i.e. electronic tally for initial count and by hand for recount) where one is cheaper and faster and the other is more expensive and more precise then it makes sense to trigger automatically if the vote is close enough that error could account for a swing.
However, recounting using the same system will result in the same outcome (varied by whatever amount of error is inherent in that counting system) with the single exception being suspected interference in the counting process.
If, for instance, there’s a municipality suspected to be staffed by pro-Russian bureaucrats then it makes to recount the result using trusted actors as a way to remove possible error.
Mandatory recounts with the same system and participants don’t get us anything particularly meaningful.