Important Country Email List cleavage that simplified the decision for them was that of «left/right». As a consequence, faced with the choice between Correismo and a Country Email List conservative right-wing banker, the reasonable expectation was that the majority of voters who had previously cast their vote for Yaku Pérez would bite the bullet in the second round and elect Arauz. Put more appropriately, the most viable options for them Country Email List were to annul the vote (precisely what Pachakutik. Was promoting as a sign of Country Email List rejection of the electoral system as a whole) or to vote for Arauz, without forgetting the tensions between Correismo and the rest of the left. This being the case, it was sensible to think that the votes that went to Hervas would go, in majority, to Country Email List Lasso. And it was reasonable to assume that most of the votes that went to Yaku Pérez would be split between Arauz and the null vote, with Country Email List only a few going to Lasso. In this specific scenario, each null vote of a voter who previously voted for Pérez was, in the general trend, one vote less for Arauz. And therefore Country Email List the beneficiary was Lasso in the calculation of the official result according to the Ecuadorian electoral system. The second round and the massive invalid vote In the Ecuadorian electoral system, null and blank votes are not part of the total "valid votes" used to Country Email List calculate the official election results. Spoiled ballots are ballots intentionally marked to be invalid. Blank votes are ballots intentionally deposited in the ballot box without marking any of the options. The valid votes are the sum of the votes Country Email List received by all the candidates in the contest. Blank votes and invalid votes are not included in this sum, and the total number of valid votes is the.