Before sunrise, polling station officials prepare materials and seal the ballot box
Elections – as we seek to encourage accountability and transparency in governments the world round, the election process is irrevocably at the heart of democracy. There are certain fixtures–campaigns and promises, volunteers, posters, and in the end a day in which people wait, often for hours, to cast a vote for the leader of their choice. But elections are also tremendously varied, and reflect the heart of the country or community in which they are held.
Last week Jonathan flew to Western Province to monitor Parliamentary elections. The election was a “by-election,” an election held off of the national cycle–in this case, the member of parliament had died, and the election was being held to select a replacement. Though by-elections tend to be quiet affairs, this one was important as it was the first test for Kenya’s new electoral commission.
Arriving the day prior, it was clear that campaigns had been in full swing–and amazingly each of the 10 candidates was sure of victory on election day! The electoral commission had the logistics well in hand, and began distributing materials to the polling station the night before. Polling station officials, in order to preserve the integrity of the election materials, slept at the polling stations and began preparing for the 6 AM opening well before dawn, their work lit by a hurricane lamp. The ballot box in each polling station was sealed four times–two seals were placed by election officials, and two by representatives of the political parties contesting the seat. The box itself was semi-transparent–held up and verified as empty before the party observers before the seals were applied. Once the box was verified empty and sealed, party agents for each candidate watched it continuously through the voting and count, so that all could agree that each vote was valid.
One of the first votes of the day
By 5:45 AM, there were more than a dozen people standing at the gate of the polling station which we “opened” (observed the opening procedures), and by 6:30 people were filing in, single file, in a line stretching into the school courtyard. Despite the wait, voters waited patiently as the election officials carefully explained the process to each voter.
As observers, we spent the day driving around the constituency, walking through polling stations and monitoring the general environment. Like the U.S., most polling stations were located in schools, but in some cases, like the station below in one of the far corners of the constituency, more rudimentary but nevertheless quite serviceable arrangements such as a tent were in place. Given a choice, I would prefer the tent over a school room–it was cooled by a fresh breeze!
As the afternoon slid by and we approached 5 PM, we drove to the station that we would “close” by watching the conclusion of voting and the process of counting the votes. The seals on the ballot boxes were broken in the presence of party agents and observers, and the painstaking process of opening and recording each vote began.
Emptying the Ballot Box for Counting
We were fortunate in that we closed a station with relatively few registered voters–and so the count was concluded at about 8 PM. For larger stations, the counting continued until 11 PM. Once the counts were completed and agreed to by all of the party agents, the ballots were placed back in the box and resealed to be delivered to the tallying center.
The tallying center was the nerve center for the election–located in a secondary school (high school), it was here that the materials had first been prepared for the elections and the officers trained. Now, at the conclusion of the day, votes were painstakingly tallied from each station on an Excel spreadsheet projected for all observers and candidates to see. We arrived at the tallying center at about 10 PM, and the count had just started. One by one, each ballot box was opened, the results read out, and any disputed ballots were examined by the chief election official and ruled valid or invalid in the presence of party agents. Finally, at 3:00 AM, all of the results were in and a winner declared. Though completely exhausted after a 22 hour day, we drove back to our hotel privileged to have witnessed yet another exercise of democracy in a remote, rural corner of Kenya.
For more pictures and notes on the by-elections, please click here.
To read the U.S. Embassy statement on the by-elections, please click here.
The chief elections officer ruling on a disputed ballot
The winner receives a congratulatory phone call
