Peru extends voting for president into Monday after chaos at polling stations

Peruvians will have to wait at least until the end of Monday to know the result of the presidential election held on Sunday, after the voting process descended into chaos in some polling stations due to a lack of ballot papers or defective computers.In an unprecedented move, Peru’s electoral agency ONPE announced on Sunday night that it would extend voting for an extra day to allow tens of thousands of Peruvians in the country and abroad, who had been unable to vote, to cast their ballots.Authorities said that 52,000 people would be allowed to vote on Monday after 15 polling stations in southern Lima had cancelled voting due to technical issues.Peru’s foreign ministry announced that several thousand voters living in the US cities of Paterson, New Jersey, and Orlando, Florida, would also be able to vote on Monday.The technical problems came amid unsubstantiated accusations of fraud and calls from candidates to extend voting into the night. Two former Lima mayors, an autocrat’s daughter and a comedian are contending to become Peru’s ninth president in a decade marked by intense political instability and corruption scandals.Exit polls, partial results, and independent tallies so far show that the four-time presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori is in the lead, though she is well short of the 50% needed to win outright, and it is still unclear who she will face in the second round.Voting is mandatory for Peruvians aged 18 to 70. Failure to vote carries a fine of up to $32.While 15 polling stations were shuttered on Sunday several others faced delays and voting began late.At a polling station in Lima’s Miraflores district on Sunday, frustrated voters chanted: “We want to vote!”One of them, Rosa María Yaksetig, said that voting had not begun until about 11.30am, adding: “The printers had run out of ink, and there was a fair amount of disorganisation, so people began to protest.”ONPE said that no official first‑round result would be available until after the additional voting had concluded on Monday.