Time To Overhaul Polling Process :: Mmegi Online

The much-awaited Goodhope-Mabule by-election is done and dusted. As expected the voting was as smooth as it could be. However, the process to finally getting the constituency a representative was time consuming and frustrating.

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.

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