While in Peru the pace of the electoral count increases uncertainty, in other countries in the region the recent processes – between 2023 and 2025 – to define their ballots have been faster, clearer and more efficient. One week before election day in our territory, with about 94% of minutes accounted for, according to the ONPEthe country has not yet defined who will accompany Keiko Fujimori in the second round, since Roberto Sánchez and Rafael López Aliaga are competing vote by vote. The slowness not only delays the result, but also prolongs a scenario of chaos that is unusual at the regional level.
The most obvious contrast appears with Chile. The Electoral Service (Servel) reached 95% of tables counted in the first round of November 16, 2025 just between four and five hours after the close of the elections, with an irreversible trend. Towards the early hours of the 17th, with 99.99% processed, the runoff between Jeannette Jara and José Antonio Kast was confirmed. The speed of the count allowed certainty in around ten and a half hours, in a system that combines efficient transmission of records, logistical organization and less electoral fragmentation.
Voting juries count the votes on Sunday, April 12, at the Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe school in Lima. Photo: EFE/ Paul Vallejos
Ecuador, for its part, offers a different scenario, although equally more defined than the Peruvian one. On February 12, 2025, around 9 pm, the National Electoral Council (CNE) reported that the scrutiny of the first round had reached 99.8% of the minutes processed. With that level of progress, it was clear from that same night of the elections that Daniel Noboa and Luisa González would go to the runoff. Although the technical 100% was reached days later and the final results took weeks due to the resolution of observed minutes and legal appeals, political certainty was never in doubt.
Argentina, meanwhile, combines speed in the dissemination of results with more extensive institutional validation. In 2023, the National Electoral Directorate (DINE) announced 76.12% of tables just three hours and twenty minutes after closing and It exceeded 98% before midnight, confirming the passage to the second round of Sergio Massa and Javier Milei. The final scrutiny, carried out by the National Electoral Justice (JNE), took 11 days and was not due to an operational delay, but to a legal verification process that includes votes from abroad and records with inconsistencies.
Bolivia, finally, shows a mixed logic: quick preliminary results and official closure in a few days. The Preliminary Results System (SIREPRE) disseminated 80% of the minutes three hours after closing and It exceeded 92% that same night, enough to shape the runoff between Rodrigo Paz and Jorge Quiroga. The official count—with legal validity—was completed five days later, after the physical processing of records by the departmental courts.
This was the rhythm of the electoral count of the four countries that had general elections between 2023 and 2025. (Design by Andrea Angulo / El Comercio).
A regional pattern and an exception
For specialist Enzo Elguera, CEO of the consulting firm IMASOLU, what has been observed in Peru breaks with a fairly clear regional pattern; even in manual systems, the results are usually defined on the same day or, at most, in 48 hours. “What we are seeing does not respond to a regional standard, but to a combination of logistical failures, high fragmentation and structural limitations,” Elguera tells El Comercio.
Among the factors that explain this difference are the high number of candidates, problems in setting up tables, the extension of the election day in some areas and the dependence on a largely manual system. Added to this is the country’s geography, which delays the arrival of records from rural areas, and the difficulties in digitizing results.
Beyond the technical, the delay has concrete political effects. Unlike other countries in the region, where the speed of the count reduces uncertainty and consolidates confidence in the process, In Peru, the lack of clear results prolongs the tension and opens space for questions like those we are experiencing right now. In this scenario, the difference is not only in times, but in standards.
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