Opposition lawmakers express concern over changes to vote counting process
EC is currently conducting training session for elections officials
File photo: officials begun vote counting process
Opposition lawmakers have expressed concern over Elections Commission (EC)’s plans to change the elections vote counting process.
While the Commission is currently conducting training session for elections officials, Addu-Meedhoo constituency MP Rozaina Adam, via twitter on Saturday night, claimed that they are being trained ‘to not disclose elections results at polling stations, and instead to enter it into a tablet immediately’.
“This cannot be accepted. The results sheets must be publicized,” she added to the tweet penned in Dhivehi.
In addition to Rozaina, Galolhu-South constituency MP Ahmed Mahloof also criticized EC over the matter, highlighting that Commissioner Ahmed Shareef has, ‘at various press conferences, assured that EC will not know the results prior to announcing, and that tablets will not be used in doing so’.
According to Mahloof, the officials are being instructed to enter results into a ‘result checker’ in the tablet, which is to be sent to the EC headquarters before being announced at individual polling stations. He also shared photos supposedly from a powerpoint presentation being used to train the officials.
However, EC’s spokesperson Ahmed Akram denied this to RaajjeMV and urged all to ‘refrain from working to create doubt amongst the people regarding the Commission’.
Earlier in July, the President’s Office requested the finance ministry to provide over 500 electronic tablets for September’s ballots.
About a month ago, EC maintained that the vote counting process will be conducted as per previous elections, where voting results were sent to the Commission manually.
Article 57 (a) of the Elections General Act states that “once the result sheet from the particular voting center is signed, the preliminary results from that Center shall be announced and publicly displayed in the voting center”, while 57 (b) notes “once the preliminary results are publicly announced by the voting center without delay, the results should be sent to the main voting center base in Malé in accordance with the manner specified by the Elections Commission”.
