“There was a tie in the vote of the members composing that body, with the two judges breaking the tie and deciding not to accept our request for a vote recount,” Hélder Martins explained to Lusa.
Hélder Martins assured that he will not appeal the Assembly’s decision “to avoid halting the entire process, as an appeal to the Constitutional Court would take several weeks.”
“We disagree with this decision, but we will abide by it,” he noted.
For the social democrat, recounting the votes would make the electoral process in Loulé “much clearer,” even for those elected: “We just wanted to determine if there was any doubt throughout the process.”
The “Fazer Melhor” coalition lost the municipal elections for the Loulé City Council to the PS on Sunday by a margin of 79 votes.
The party led by Hélder Martins justified the request for a vote recount in one of the municipality’s most populous parishes, citing reports of “some irregularities and inconsistencies” during the electoral process.
“We have no indications of anything specific, we just want to be completely assured with total transparency,” he concluded.
In Quarteira Parish, 9,011 out of 21,507 registered voters cast their ballots, tallying 3,949 votes for the PS (43.82%), 2,660 for the “Fazer Melhor” coalition (29.52%), and 1,932 for Chega (21.44%).
The BE/Livre (L) coalition garnered 136 votes (1.51%), the CDU (PCP/PEV Coalition) 127 votes (1.41%), and Volt Portugal 34 votes (0.38%).
Socialist Telmo Pinto, the former president of the Quarteira Parish Council, won the municipal elections on Sunday for the presidency of the Loulé City Council with a total of 11,836 votes (38.12 percent), just 79 more than the 11,757 votes (37.86%) received by the coalition led by Hélder Martins.
Chega was the third most voted political force, with 5,509 votes (17.74%), followed by the BE/L coalition (574, 1.85%), CDU (508), and Volt (109, 0.35%).
