Defaulting polling day staff could be blacklisted
Ballot boxes in one of the containers which were opened on day one of the national recount
Ballot boxes in one of the containers which were opened on day one of the national recount

GUYANA Elections Commission (GECOM) Commissioner, Vincent Alexander, has stated that he will be advocating for the blacklisting of GECOM polling day officials who have failed to adhere to Elections regulations, resulting in various irregularities in ballot boxes.

“Collateral to this exercise called a recount has to be the question of how you deal with officers who either proved to be incompetent or who proved to be deviant in their behavior. That’s a matter we have to look at once we would have finished this recount; who are those persons who didn’t do what they were supposed to do and why not,” he told reporters on Monday.

He made these comments just outside the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC) where the national recount in ongoing.

Since its commencement on May 6, party agents have complained about the irregularities witnessed in several ballot boxes such as missing poll books, missing Official List of Electors (OLE) and missing PE envelopes and unsigned oaths of identity.

Poll books have been recorded as missing for Region One with initial reports that they were in the possession of the region’s Returning Officer (RO), Trevor Harris. Harris had claimed that he left the books in the GECOM office at Mabaruma and that he was no longer on the job.

The books are essential as they detail the voting process; the number of used and spoilt ballots; signatures of counting and polling agents, the presiding officer, ballot clerks and other polling staff; the time process of the election day and details on affidavits of the identity of persons accompanying a voter to the polling station.

The poll books for the Region have since been located and arrangements were made for them to be transported to the recount centre. Alexander said that under GECOM’s regulations, poll books should be placed in the relevant ballot boxes.

He said that while it must be considered that some poll books may have been deposited at GECOM’s head office and are available upon request, this was not the case for Region One.

The Commissioner stated that GECOM will only become aware of possible additional missing poll books from other regions when the ballot boxes from those regions are being counted.

Should a poll book be necessary for the count of a box but the said book is missing, he said that the numerical count and other possible checks will be completed on the said box but it will be resealed as the Commission seeks to locate the missing book.

“Our position is that we’ll go ahead and do the examination [of the box] and we’ll have to look at the issues arising from the unavailability of the poll book subsequently and the reason for that is that not in every instance, the content of the poll book impacts what’s happening,” he explained.

On Monday, the Guyana Chronicle was made aware by APNU/AFC party member, Mervyn Williams, that poll books from Region Nine also were not placed in their respective ballot boxes. In fact, he said that there were only returned some three days ago after the recount process had commenced and it was noted in the media that the books are important to the process.

Reports are that RO of the Region, John Abraham, did not send the books along with the ballot boxes because the one belonging to the polling station at Shulinab is missing.

“It is extremely troubling that the poll books would be kept out of the system for so long,” Williams said. “One wonders whether the poll books that were sent down were in fact the ones that were originally used on the elections day.”

The recount process is not yet at ballot boxes from Region Nine but when the Guyana Chronicle questioned Alexander on the matter he said that it hasn’t or hasn’t yet been reported to the Commission.

Meanwhile, APNU+AFC agent, Ganesh Mahipaul, just days ago, informed the media that some ballot boxes belonging to Region Three were found to be without their OLE, without the required envelopes and with unsigned oaths of identity.

The OLE is key to determining that the number of ballots in the box matches the number issued by the GECOM based on the number of electors on the List; PE envelopes are the yellow envelopes required to be placed in ballot boxes and each is labelled to represent its content while an Oath of Identity is necessary for persons voting without identifying documents.

Altogether, Commissioner Alexander — the Commission’s longest standing Commissioner — said that is has long been advocated at GECOM for the establishment of a pool of reliable GECOM polling day officials, based on performance.

“We had taken the decision, some time ago, starting in [former Chief Elections Officer, Gocool] Boodhoo’s time that we should have a pool of election officials to resort to from time to time as elections come along, and, that at the end of every election, we should blacklist persons who were in that pool if we found that they were not sufficiently competent to do the job or if we found that their conduct was in repute; so that would have to be activated at this time,” he said.

However, Alexander noted that while he will advocate for this to take place, the final decision will have to be made at the level of the Commission.

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