The Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) has dis­missed al­leged ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the spe­cial vot­ing process raised by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC). 

In a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day evening, the EBC stat­ed that its Chief Elec­tion Of­fi­cer Fern Nar­cis-Scope re­spond­ed to a re­quest for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion made by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar hours ear­li­er. 

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s Of­fice in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day morn­ing, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al not­ed that she first raised con­cerns while rep­re­sent­ing the par­ty at Queen’s Hall, on Fri­day. 

Lutch­me­di­al claimed that when she and oth­er ob­servers from the four of the oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties con­test­ing to­day’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions were al­lowed to view the open­ing of bal­lot box­es that em­anat­ed from spe­cial vot­ing cen­tres across T&T, she no­ticed that two from San Fer­nan­do ap­peared to be al­ready opened. 

She not­ed that she took pho­tographs of the box­es and did not raise a con­cern as the oth­er box­es were opened and bal­lots were sort­ed in­to the 141 dis­tricts be­ing con­test­ed in the elec­tion. 

She claimed that when she even­tu­al­ly point­ed out that the box­es were open out­side of the ob­servers’ pres­ence, EBC staff main­tained that such did not oc­cur un­til she pro­duced the pho­tographs she had tak­en ear­li­er. 

She al­leged that when she con­tin­ued to raise con­cerns, EBC of­fi­cials present could not give a prop­er ex­pla­na­tion. 

Lutch­me­di­al al­so raised con­cerns over how bal­lots from the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion were pack­aged as the names of vot­ers were re­vealed when sort­ing.

Nar­cis-Scope sought to ad­dress the spe­cif­ic con­cerns ini­tial­ly raised oral­ly by Lutch­me­di­al and re­it­er­at­ed by Per­sad-Bisses­sar at the EBC’s re­quest.

The EBC’s re­lease stat­ed that Nar­cis-Scope ex­plained to Per­sad-Bisses­sar that the Elec­tion Rules un­der the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple Act do not pro­vide for the seal­ing of bal­lot box­es at spe­cial polling sta­tions.

“Nar­cis-Scope ad­vised that it had be­come the prac­tice for Spe­cial Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cers to use bal­lot box­es to trans­port the sealed en­velopes but there is no re­quire­ment in law, to ei­ther use bal­lot box­es or to seal them,” the re­lease said. 

“The bro­ken seals were, in fact, part of a pre­vi­ous process utilised at the Spe­cial Polling Sta­tion and was in no way part of the process be­ing wit­nessed at Queen’s Hall,” it added. 

It al­so stat­ed that Nar­cis-Scope’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion al­so re­vealed that all the spe­cial en­velopes were sealed by the Spe­cial Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer and for mat­ters of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty in the trans­porta­tion, all box­es were locked.

It not­ed that the spe­cial en­velopes were found to be sealed and in­tact. 

“Nar­cis-Scope not­ed that the fact that two bal­lot box­es were not sealed does not im­pact the out­come of the elec­tion in any giv­en elec­toral dis­trict as sug­gest­ed by the Op­po­si­tion Leader,” it said. 

The EBC said that Nar­cis-Scope al­so ad­dressed the is­sue raised with the San­gre Grande bal­lots pack­ag­ing. 

It said that Nar­cis-Scope’s in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that the 11 cov­er­ing en­velopes with the de­c­la­ra­tion of iden­ti­ty of the spe­cial elec­tors as re­quired by Elec­tion Rule 71 were placed in the bal­lot box at that lo­ca­tion, which was then locked and sealed. 

“A prop­er record was kept of the dis­tricts that the bal­lots were cast for via a State­ment of the Con­tents of the Spe­cial Bal­lot Box in ac­cor­dance with Elec­tion Rule 84 (2) and was du­ly signed by the Spe­cial Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer. This State­ment was al­so shown to wit­ness­es present at the sort­ing ex­er­cise,” it said.  

“In clos­ing, the Chief Elec­tion Of­fi­cer not­ed that it was re­gret­table that notwith­stand­ing the train­ing pro­vid­ed there was a de­vi­a­tion from the ap­proved pro­ce­dure, this de­vi­a­tion how­ev­er, did not com­pro­mise the in­tegri­ty of the process as all staff of the Com­mis­sion des­ig­nat­ed to par­tic­i­pate in spe­cial poll pro­ceed­ings are re­quired to take de­c­la­ra­tions of se­cre­cy and fur­ther, the iden­ti­ty of per­sons who have cast their bal­lots is an es­sen­tial com­po­nent of the elec­toral process,” it added. 

Deal­ing with the is­sues at the ear­li­er press con­fer­ence, Lutch­me­di­al said she and her par­ty were es­pe­cial­ly con­cerned by the ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty based on the fact that the bal­lot box­es in ques­tion con­tained the most bal­lots of the 15 box­es used for spe­cial vot­ers. 

She al­so not­ed that a large num­ber of bal­lots were from vot­ers in hot­ly con­test­ed dis­tricts with small mar­gins of vic­to­ry in the last poll in 2019. 

Lutch­me­di­al claimed that the UNC was con­cerned with pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence in the elec­toral process. 

“We raise it not be­cause we want to be an­tag­o­nis­tic to­wards the EBC or any­thing like that but you have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure elec­tions are free and fair, free from fear and the peo­ple feel con­fi­dent in the man­ner in which an elec­tion is car­ried out,” Lutch­me­di­al said. 

In ad­di­tion to an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Lutch­me­di­al al­so called on the EBC to dis­close the names of the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers who were re­spon­si­ble for seal­ing the bal­lot box­es that were pur­port­ed­ly found to be open. 

“We will con­sid­er all our le­gal op­tions based on the re­sponse we get...If this mat­ter is to go to court, we need names,” Lutch­me­di­al said.