Peru's presidential election has been thrown into confusion after a major administrative failure prevented tens of thousands of voters from casting ballots on Sunday, forcing authorities to extend polling into Monday and delaying the announcement of official results.

The crisis began early Sunday morning in Lima, Peru's capital, when long queues formed outside polling stations that had no ballot papers. An external company contracted by the national electoral authority, ONPE, had simply failed to deliver the materials to 13 polling locations, leaving more than 52,000 registered voters unable to vote. Police anti-corruption units later raided the offices of both the contractor and ONPE itself, and an investigation into the firm has been launched. After hours of uncertainty over whether a full re-run might be necessary, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal ruled that the affected stations would remain open until Monday afternoon — an unprecedented two-day voting process in Peruvian history.

Critics immediately raised concerns about the integrity of the Monday vote, noting that it would take place while public vote-counting was already underway and results were being broadcast. With roughly 45 percent of votes tallied in the early hours of Monday, right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori — daughter of jailed former authoritarian president Alberto Fujimori — led with approximately 17 percent of the vote. Former Lima mayor Rafael López Aliaga, also on the right, stood at 15.6 percent, while liberal former culture minister Jorge Nieto held 13.4 percent, keeping the race for a second-round runoff, scheduled for 7 June, tightly contested.

Tensions spilled onto the streets as hundreds of López Aliaga's supporters gathered outside the electoral court on Sunday evening, after the candidate himself alleged fraud on social media platform X. Riot police took up positions around the building. However, Annalisa Corrado, head of the European Union's electoral observation mission — which deployed 150 monitors across the country — described the problems as "delays" and said observers had found no evidence of deliberate manipulation.

The stakes are high: while 52,000 missing votes may seem small against an electorate of 27 million, the margin could prove decisive. In Peru's last presidential election in 2021, leftist Pedro Castillo defeated Keiko Fujimori in the runoff by just 44,000 votes. The episode also underscores the fragility of Peruvian democratic institutions — a country that has cycled through seven presidents in ten years amid chronic political instability and corruption scandals.