Simultaneous Counting to be Done Upon Close of Polls on Election Day

Josephine Tamai

Polls close at six pm on Election Day, and usually results would start coming out hours after – from around ten for the smallest constituency until the early hours of the morning. But things are going to be different this time, because the Elections and Boundaries Office has implemented a new system of simultaneous counting.

Josephine Tamai, Chief Elections Officer

“One of the things that we realized is that people have already gone to the polls to cast their votes and people want to know the results, so in order for us to improve on what we do we have implemented whereby we do simultaneous counting, so that all boxes are counted at the same time, or as many boxes as possible are counted at the same time. I know sometimes people complain that they cannot afford to have all boxes counted, but it’s just for us to be more efficient. We’ve tried it before, it has worked very well, the Belizean public has the information in terms of the results much earlier…and that is why we’re doing it again and we are hoping that it will work again and we continue to improve as we go along. Normally for a general election it’s much quicker than for Municipal election, because it’s basically just one candidate, so we are hoping that we will have results out well before midnight. We’re hoping, because in cases whereby persons request a recount or whatever it is, we just have to wait until those have been completed.”