Time To Overhaul Polling Process

Monitor Editor | Monday August 17, 2015 11:54

The greatest headache was not so much the voting. Surprisingly, getting all the 85 boxes from the polling stations from the far-off and inaccessible roads to the counting centre, Goodhope Secondary School was smooth and timely. When the polls closed at 7pm, the boxes started being moved, with the last arriving before 11 pm.

The problem was the verification process. The system of taking each box, and counting all the used voting paper and tally it against the number provided to the polling stations, proved the biggest headache in the past general elections of October 24, 2014, just as it did this weekend. From the moment all the police escorted boxes arrived at the counting centre, the verification process started, only to end Sunday just before lunchtime. More than 12 hours of verification.

Officers who start work at polling centres at 5 am, two hours before voting opens do verification and counting. The sensitivity of their work means they cannot take a break, except short ones for meals and nature call. Once voting is done, 12 hours later, counting and presiding officers, receive and start with the tedious, yet necessary process, of verification. As is a norm, and this time around, more intense than ever because of the focus and greater interest in this by-election, party agents, observers and the media, were there from the start of polling to end of counting. And so are thousands of supporters, who this Saturday, converged at Goodhope Secondary School from the moment polling stopped. 

The latter are usually in jolly, and of course majority in drinking mood. Most had been drinking during the day waiting for the final moment, and it is during the long, exhausting verification process, when anxiety sets in, and tensions rise. With multitudes, of mainly youth, and openly hostile opposing crowds, the tensions can be felt. The situation, therefore, can, and has been explosive.

The reason for this period, of verification, being tense and potentially explosive, is because unlike the counting where all can ‘see’ the end with each ballot paper counted, with verification, there is nothing to suggest the direction of the results, except officers calling numbers and numbers.This process, while necessary to mitigate, and hopefully lessen incidents of cheating, is just too long and frustrating. As observers have noted before, this process, should be looked into seriously.