PR Newswire
April 8, 2016
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — According to NOAH/Haiti Democracy’s 8th Mission, the October 25, 2015 presidential elections were found to be generally fair and fraud free.
The report to be released this morning found that the process was generally free of major irregularities in the three most important stages of the electoral process namely: opening voting locations, the actual voting process, and post election vote counting.
“The constant and continuing accusations of fraud are surprising to us as our Mission did not find enough irregularities to warrant the charge of generalized fraud,” says James Morrell, director of the Haiti Democracy Project.
The report notes that opening of polling stations occurred without error in 72 percent of all cases observed. The most common errors included: voters who could not find their names on the list; poll watchers who attempted to enter without appropriate party credentials; and a slow process of counting blank ballots during preparation.
It also states that the actual voting process was generally irregularity free, with no problems reported at 150 observed voting stations, minor problems at 82, and major problems at 9.
The 8th Mission observers reported that in all monitored polling stations, voters’ names were checked against the voter registry list and voters signed the registry before casting their vote. Observers identified party poll watchers who succeeded in voting more than once in only 3 percent of the polling locations.
Only minor errors were detected in the vote counting process, which did not affect the count or the integrity of the results. The observers kept manual counts of the votes from the polling stations which were later compared to the published results. The report showed an almost perfect correlation between data gathered at the polling stations and the posted results. According to the report there were no differences in how the polling stations or the Tabulation Center handled the presidential, legislative and local vote.
The results were based on the findings of 208 accredited observers from seven departments in the country: Nord, Centre, Ouest, Sud-Est, Sud, Nippes, and Grand’Anse. The first sixty-eight reports received are available at http://haitipolicy.org, with the rest scheduled for scanning.
Images of sampled polling returns alongside published results are posted at http://haitipolicy.org/2016/03/observer-reports-2.
Contact: James Morrell, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Haiti Democracy Project
2303 17th St. NW Washington, D.C. 20009
(202)588‐8700 (509)4886-7333
haiti@haitipolicy.org
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