Soaked ballot box stalls completion of Reg. 1 recount

May 15, 2020 News

– 54 ballot boxes counted on Day 9

The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has been stalled from completing the recount of the last of the 99 ballot boxes in Region/District One, due to the soaked condition of the box, which was discovered on the first day of the National Recount.

GECOM PRO, Yolanda Ward

To alleviate this predicament, GECOM’s Public Relations Officer, Yolanda Ward, told media operatives that the Commission decided that the contents of the soaked ballot box will be placed in a secure location, which will be monitored by guards until those contents have dried.
“Once those have somehow dried they will be examine and the Commission will decide on whether they are going to proceed with the count for that box or if another measure will be needed in that regard,” Ward explained to the press.
She continued “Now that Region One has been completed, with the exception of that box, the two workstations that were initially assigned for the counting of that District have been assigned to conduct the counting for Region Five.”
She was keen to highlight that the Commission has been exploring possibilities regarding the time spent on a ballot box and how the time can be reduced. She stated that the body decided that the folio will be utilized by the Presiding Officer in the cases where the Official List of Electors (OLE) was absent.
She related that, “Rather than there being a delay in the process, and to ensure that the process continues, the folio can be used since it contains the total number of voters, as compared to the OLE. As part of this process there is a ballot box checklist and they (the commission) were also exploring how to reduce the time spent on the checklist in examining some of those envelopes.”
Against this backdrop she announced that envelopes labeled PE 6, PE 17 and PE 18 will not be checked.
“Some of these items here really have no relevance to the count or to the process.”
Furthermore, the elections commission, on Day Nine, managed to complete the recount of 54 ballot boxes in Region One. Ward announced that 15 ballot boxes were recounted for Region 1; 12 for Region 2; 17 for Region 3; 14 for Region 4 and seven for Region 7. These figures have raised the total number of completed boxes to 421, which represents a 17% of the 2,339 boxes that contained ballots cast in these elections.
With regards to tabulation, some 404 Statements of Recount (SORs) were processed for the General, and 404 for Regional Elections.
GECOM is considering the addition of six possible sites within the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC) where additional workstations can be established to accelerate the national recount.
The Commission will, however, only move forward after it receives a report from the National COVID-19 Task Force (NCTF) which visited the recount centre to inspect the sites today.
Commissioner Vincent Alexander said the task force will advise the commission on whether the places identified can be used for the recount. He said he is inclined to all decisions by the task force.
On Tuesday, the commissioner expressed concern with the number of persons currently utilizing the ACCC. He reported an average of 400 persons occupying the conference centre each day. These include party representatives, local and international observers, GECOM staff, members of the Guyana Police Force (GPF), food handlers and members of the maintenance crew.
In the meantime, he reported that the NCTF, during a visit to the recount venue, observed that some GECOM employees, working in the vicinity of the containers, were at the time not wearing their face masks.
This was immediately brought to the attention of the Chief Elections Officer (CEO) who instructed the officials to do so. The task force had also made some spot checks at workstations to see if they were observing the recommendations.

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