Support dwindles for leftist's call for Ecuador election recount

QUITO, April 14 (Reuters) - Support for Ecuadorean leftist Luisa Gonzalez's call for a recount in the country's presidential election was dwindling on Monday, as a growing number of prominent members of her party said President Daniel Noboa had secured a full term in Sunday's vote.

Noboa's support was holding at 55.6%, the level at which it remained for nearly the entire count. Gonzalez has 44.4% support.

Noboa and electoral authorities said on Sunday he had won the contest, leading by more than 1 million votes in a surprising sweep after a tight February first round, when he finished ahead by just over 16,700 votes.

Gonzalez told supporters on Sunday she did not accept the results, which she called "grotesque" fraud, and that she would demand a recount.

She offered no evidence of fraud, nor did she immediately call for protests. Gonzalez had not appeared publicly on Monday as of late afternoon.

Some ballot box tallies lacked proper signatures, said Andres Arauz, a former presidential candidate from Gonzalez's Citizens' Revolution (RC) party. He posted six images he said were examples.

Candidates can contest results under some conditions after the official count closes. As of late afternoon on Monday, less than 1% of ballot boxes remained to be counted and only 0.81% registered some kind of irregularity.

Noboa, Gonzalez and her mentor, former President Rafael Correa, had all warned of the potential for fraud ahead of the vote and each candidate had some 45,000 polling place observers.

Influential RC members individually recognized Noboa's victory.

"If the people elected him, we must respect it. Whether we like it or not, the people voted democratically," Aquiles Alvarez, the RC mayor of Ecuador's largest city, Guayaquil, said on X. "The worst is to be a bad loser."

The prefects of Guayas, Manabi and Pichincha provinces as well as the mayor ...
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