Buenos Aires City’s National Electoral Board warned the party of far-right presidential candidate Javier Milei that it would be the “sole responsible party” should there be a lack of ballots during the presidential run-off scheduled for Sunday.

 “Although this Board has a contingency system for a potential lack of ballots, this does not exempt the alliance from the responsibilities established in the legal regulations,” the board said on Wednesday in minutes signed by Judges Jorge Morán, Sebastián Picasso, and María Servini.

The document claimed that Milei’s coalition La Libertad Avanza (LLA) failed to heed a warning issued on Saturday in which they were urged to provide more ballots for the polling stations in the district. 

“Their silence will mean that the absence of ballots for that alliance in the different voting stations will be their sole responsibility,” they added.

The board said that LLA delivered 10,000 packages of ballots with between 100 and 150 each, while the ruling coalition Unión por la Patria (UxP) provided the same amount of packages but with 350 ballots each, as is recommended.

In response, LLA’s technical representative Fernando Cerimedo claimed on X (formerly Twitter) that “there are more than enough ballots, we’re just not going to give them to the Kirchnerite thieves who handle their distribution.”

Santiago Viola, LLA’s legal representative, echoed Cerimedo and told the Herald that the party’s volunteer monitors would provide the ballots. “We have the necessary number [of volunteers] and we take full responsibility,” he said.

Since late October, the coalition has been attempting to establish a narrative of electoral fraud, particularly surrounding polling station monitors and the vote count. There has been no evidence of irregularities, with the general election showing the lowest-ever difference between the provisional and final vote tallies.

In October, Viola testified before an electoral prosecutor that there was “ballot theft in several schools around the country” during the primaries, but told the Herald that he only had evidence of  “15 to 20” instances of that happening. Cerimedo, Viola, and other LLA representatives said that happened because of the absence of party monitors, something they think won’t happen in these elections.

“From October to today, there are three coalitions that were left out of the running and will not participate in the run-off,” Viola said. “Two of them have a greater affinity with us than with [UxP] and most of their activists offered to monitor the elections for us.”

When asked which two coalitions he was referring to, he named Juntos por el Cambio (JxC) and Hacemos por Córdoba (HxC).

Some JxC leaders, including former candidate and head of the PRO party Patricia Bullrich and former president Mauricio Macri, have expressed their support for Milei. HxC’s leader, Juan Schiaretti, has not publicly supported either candidate. However last week, Córdoba City’s vice-mayor-elect and HxC member, Javier Pretto, said he would vote for Milei in the run-off.