Romania recounts ballots as top court weighs outside meddling

Romanian authorities began recounting ballots after an election that shook the country’s political establishment with a victory for a little-known ultranationalist candidate as the country’s top court weighed accusations of outside meddling.

The Constitutional Court in Bucharest ordered the recount Thursday as security officials said the first round of the presidential election had been marred by a cyber operation carried out on the TikTok social media platform. Romania’s electoral authority said a count could only be completed by 10 p.m. on Sunday, after polls close for the country’s parliamentary election.

The court’s intervention has raised speculation that it could force a repeat of the first round. As the country holds back-to-back presidential and parliamentary elections, the head of Romania’s electoral authority, Toni Grebla, said a new presidential ballot could conceivably take place later in December.

The court decision and the warnings about a foreign influence campaign that aimed to tip the balance in Romania’s democracy intensified the nation’s biggest political crisis since the collapse of communism 35 years ago. Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, who had been tipped to win the presidency, was eliminated in the first round, prompting him to resign as Social Democratic leader.

Amid mounting speculation that a recount could reverse his loss — he was edged out of second place by fewer than 3,000 votes by opposition leader Elena Lasconi — Ciolacu pledged that he would remain out of the contest, even if a recount put him back in the race.

Calin Georgescu, a candidate who has praised Vladimir Putin in the past, emerged from obscurity to win. He’s set to face Lasconi in a Dec. 8 runoff.

“I’m not interested in second place,” Ciolacu wrote in a Facebook post late Thursday. “I just want people to know the truth, which is far more important than my candidacy. And then Romanians will know how to punish those who stole their vote better than any state institution.”

‘Preferential Treatment’

Georgescu, a fringe independent who has denounced military aid to Ukraine and questioned Romania’s membership in NATO, had mounted a vigorous social-media campaign with posts on TikTok. Romania’s Supreme Defense Council, which includes top government and intelligence officials, issued a statement Thursday saying that one candidate benefited from “massive exposure and preferential treatment.”

Although the security panel didn’t explicitly identify Georgescu, it cited Russian influence operations that aimed to shift public opinion in Romania. It accused TikTok of failing to label the candidate’s videos as election material as required by Romanian law.

Allegations of Russian interference in Romanian elections are unfounded and unsupported, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday, according to the Interfax news agency.

TikTok said it was “categorically false” to claim that it treated Georgescu’s account differently from other candidates.