Ecuadorans started voting for a new president Sunday in the midst of a drug war and a rash of political assassinations that cut short the bid of a popular candidate. The finalists in this runoff election — lawyer Luisa Gonzalez, 45, and banana empire heir Daniel Noboa, 35 — campaigned in bullet-proof vests as a climate of fear grips the once-peaceful country. Both have vowed to prioritize dealing with the escalating violence. Voting stations opened at 7:00 am (1200 GMT), with the president of the National Electoral Commission, Diana Atamaint, declaring the runoff to be officially under way. “It is an honor and a privilege,” she said. The main concerns of Ecuadorans, according to recent polls, are crime and violence in a country where the murder rate has quadrupled in the four years to 2022. Some 54,000 police were deployed to keep the vote safe. Long a haven between major cocaine exporters Colombia and Peru, violence in the South American nation has exploded in recent years as enemy gangs with links to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control. The fighting has seen at least 460 inmates massacred in prison since February 2021 — many beheaded or burned alive in mass riots. And the bloodbath has spilled into the streets, with gangs dangling headless corpses from city bridges and detonating car bombs outside police stations in a show of force. Some 3,600 Ecuadorans have been murdered so far this year, according to the Ecuadoran Organized Crime Observatory, including nearly a dozen politicians. In August, the violence claimed the life of anti-graft and anti-cartel journalist and presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, mowed down in a barrage of submachine gun fire after a campaign speech. He had been polling in second place. A state of emergency was declared after Villavicencio’s assassination, and Noboa and Gonzalez both campaigned with heavy security details. Reporters following them have also had to don protective jackets and helmets and travel in armored vehicles. Many have received death threats. Seven suspects in Villavicencio’s assassination were killed in prison.