Counting Ballots Should be Fairly Quick

Josephine Tamai

So how efficient will the counting process be once polls are closed at six o’clock?  In Belize City, it is expected that the turnaround time for the counting of ballots will be fairly quick, however, in areas that are presently inundated the transportation of ballots once polls are closed will delay the counting process.  One such location, says Tamai, is Crooked Tree Village.

Josephine Tamai, Chief Elections Officer

“I believe that the process will be efficient, but since the last time you asked me that question, I know that the whole flooding situation and access to certain areas by road, the road conditions are not as we would have wanted it to because some got damaged with the flood.  So we could see whereby there might be some delays in terms of transporting of boxes, we’ll take maybe a couple minutes more than we had anticipated in the beginning.  In areas like, for example, in Belize City where we shouldn’t have much of an issue, we expect that the counting should be finished fairly quickly.  But in areas where the polling stations are far from the counting stations, we could see whereby the counting will be put back a little bit, so we’re hoping that we should get results by the following morning.  I don’t want to give a specific time because of some of the challenges that we know we’re going to experience.  Like, for example, in Crooked Tree we know that officers who will work in Crooked Tree will have to be transported by the coast guard because we know that they won’t be able to get into Crooked Tree by road.  So again, the challenge in terms of getting those ballots out, of course they will be transported by the coast guard.  You have the police officers and agents from the political parties.”