Romania’s top court requests presidential election recount

BUCHAREST — Romania’s Constitutional Court on Thursday asked the country’s top election authority to recount and check again all ballots from Sunday’s presidential election first round.
The Central Electoral Bureau will meet this afternoon to decide on the next steps.
Turmoil has gripped Romania, as the court also decided to postpone until Friday a seismic decision on whether to certify or cancel the first round of the country’s presidential election.
The postponement, coming after a court meeting in Bucharest on Thursday morning, means the two candidates who should contest the runoff on Dec. 8 — ultranationalist independent candidate Călin Georgescu and liberal Elena Lasconi — cannot yet start campaigning.
Two of the 13 initial presidential hopefuls on Wednesday requested the court nullifies the first round which took place Sunday, claiming fraud from Lasconi’s party, Save Romania Union, and Georgescu’s campaign.
One of the plaintiffs, Cristian Terheș, a member of the European Parliament who received about 1 percent of the vote Sunday, claimed among other things that some of the votes for another candidate who dropped out a week before the election and endorsed Lasconi were illegally transferred to her. The candidate, Ludovic Orban, a former Romanian prime minister, dropped out too late to be taken off the ballot.
The court’s demand for a recount came in response to Terheș’ complaint.
The second plaintiff, Sebastian Constantin Popescu, who obtained 0.15 percent of the vote, accused Georgescu of hiding his campaign financing sources. Georgescu, a surprising victor in the first round, claimed he had spent no money on his campaign. 
But the Romanian election authority made a complaint to the police and prosecutors over campaign posters of Georgescu that didn’t provide any clear source of financing.
The court rejected Popescu’s demand as coming too late.