The second and final round elections in Costa Rica officially began with the opening of the voting center in Sidney, Australia, where a native from Heredia, Randall Arce was the first Costa Rican to vote abroad in this presidential elections process.

The Supreme Electoral Court opened 52 voting centers for citizens who live abroad; in total there are almost 31 thousand Ticos that live in different countries that can cast their vote this April 1st, the majority of them live in the United States.

Voting centers in Costa Rica will open doors at 6 a.m. this Sunday and will close at 6 p.m.; even though in first round a candidate needs at least a 40% of the votes to become the president (percentage not reached by any candidate last February 4), in the second round one vote alone will make the difference.

Either Carlos Alvarado from the Citizens’ Action party or Fabricio Alvarado from National Restauration Party will be the new president of Costa Rica, the first results are expected by around 9 p.m. Sunday, but because the difference is of just one vote, unless the difference is significant we may not have the final and official result until early Monday, April 2.

What happens in the event of a tie? In the event of a tie the oldest candidate will be named president, in other words Fabricio Alvarado who is 43 years old would become the President since Carlos Alvarado is only 38.

This is the third time in Costa Rica’s history that a second round is needed to define the winning candidate.
In total over 3.3 million Costa Ricans have the right and duty to vote, however, in the first round, 34.34% of the voters chose not to vote, and a similar number or higher is expected for the second round since many Ticos are still undecided and because the election day fell on Easter Sunday, the last day of the Holy Week when many Ticos are still enjoying their vacation.

Polls have thrown different results, company Opol Consultores showed Fabricio Alvarado with a comfortable advantage, while the survey carried out by the Center for Political Studies and Investigation of the University of Costa Rica (CIEP-UCR) had the candidates in a statistica tie.