Election bosses say vote will be fair
Over the last two weeks, rumours about the secret vote in Belize’s elections not being so secret, have punctuated the radio call-in talk shows. Chief Elections Officer Myrtle Palacio immediately dismissed the reports as unfounded and nothing more than “mischievousness”. But today, after concerns continued to emerge from the public, it was members of the Elections and Boundaries Commission who sought to assure the electorate that the process is fair. They say the numbers on the ballots serve a specific purpose but cannot be used to identify a voter.
Norman Moore, Member Elections & Boundaries Commission
“If you had a book with ballot papers and there is no number, no reference, only the ballot sheet and where you marked your “X”, and let’s say this polling station now issued two hundred and fifty ballot papers. But when the box is opened there is two hundred and seventy-five. Which of those twenty-five are you going to say are not legal ballots? But by having numbers, you reference it to the stub in the book. And let’s say the numbers run from 4501 to 4600, then you check back by the stub, the numbers matching them and those that don’t match are illegal ballot papers, those are the ones you have to discard. But if it doesn’t have a number, we would be in one heck of a situation, not only with the people running for the elections, but with the voters themselves.”
Janelle Chanona
“Bottom line though gentlemen, the vote is secret. No voter can be identified by a ballot paper to reveal how they voted.”
Gadsby Ramos, Chairman, Elections & Boundaries Commission
“The ballot cannot be traced because when the elector walks in he is identified and his name on the ballot list is crossed and he is given a ballot. That ballot is number as Mr. Panton said a while ago. The ballot is numbered and likewise the stub. It’s initialled and he votes and comes back, show the initial and put it back into the box. Now, when the line is drawn through the voter’s name, the number of the ballot is not recorded on that list. So once that ballot is dropped into the box, you cannot trace that ballot, and that is what makes the system a fool-proof secret system.”
Janelle Chanona
“But then by that explanation though, the person who crosses out the name, the presiding officer, if they felt like it, they could in fact write down that number.”
Herbert Panton, Member, Elections & Boundaries Commission
“Let’s go to the extreme and say the presiding officer does do that, does record the number next to the name of every person who voted, that information is useless unless you are able to get back into the ballot box. And the only way you can get back in there is under the direction of the courts.”
Norman Moore
“But then again, too, if you are voting, or anybody for that matter is voting and you see an officer writing taking the number from your ballot paper and writing it somewhere else, that to me is illegal. You wouldn’t want to vote, you would make an objection right them and there. It would be too obvious for somebody to do that. And if that person that called in and said, yes, he was recording the numbers, I don’t think it is one of the elections officers, and I don’t think it can be one of the agents in the polling stating sitting eight to ten feet away cannot see the number on that ballot paper to say, okay, I can write it down.”
Herbert Panton
“Political parties aren’t just participants in the elections, they are stakeholders in the process. They become stakeholders via the party’s presence on the Elections and Boundaries Commission, they become stakeholders via their presence in polling stations on election day via their representatives and they become stakeholders by constantly viewing and being a part of the entire process, voting, counting what have you. And as far as I can say, as the U.D.P. representative on the commission, we don’t have any problems whatsoever with the process. We have never have and we certainly don’t have at this time and I would think it is the same thing for the People’s United Party.”
According to the Elections and Boundaries Commission, there has never been any formal accusation in any election that officers or politicians have tried or succeeded in finding out how any particular citizen voted. In 1979, following the victory of the People’s United Party, elements of the U.D.P., then led by Theodore Aranda, accused the government of pre-printing the ballots with “disappearing ink” that somehow magically turned U.D.P. votes into votes for the P.U.P.
