Opening

Problems were reported by 32 percent of the observers. Examples:

  • Someone threatened the election workers
  • Late-arriving party poll-watchers made trouble
  • Poll watchers were trying to get in without their badges having been stamped
  • Poll watchers got to vote multiple times
  • Voters couldn’t find their names on the list
  • There weren’t enough security agents
  • Voters wouldn’t stay in line
  • Voters went to the wrong polling place
  • A poll watcher showed up with a gun
  • The election workers didn’t count the blank ballots individually, as they are supposed to; they just took the numbers off the packages

Voting Process

  1. Unauthorized persons in the voting rooms: 9 percent
  2. Full presence of party poll-watchers, ruling party and opposition:
    98 percent. Just ruling party: 2 percent
  3. Party poll-watchers getting to vote multiple times: 3 percent
  4. Poll watchers and other partisans outnumbered regular voters: 1 percent
  5. Security problems: None, 89 percent. Reported to observer but not
    actually observed, 5 percent. Observed, 6 percent
  6. Problems in voter access to polling rooms: 14 percent
  7. Election workers checked voters’ names against the list: 100 percent
  8. Voters had to sign the signature list before voting: 100 percent
  9. Violations of the secrecy of the vote: 12 percent
  10. Acts of intimidation: None, 89 percent. Reported but not observed, 5
    percent. Observed, 6 percent
  11. Illegal political activities: None, 90 percent. Reported, 8 percent.
    Observed, 2 percent
  12. Persons trying to interrupt the vote: None, 92 percent. Reported, 6
    percent. Observed, 1 percent. Armed interrupter, 1 observed
  13. Overall evaluation of irregularities in the voting process: None, 67
    percent. Minor, 24 percent. Many minor but not enough to invalidate,
    9 percent. Major, enough to invalidate, reported, 0.4 percent. Major observed, 3 percent

Closing

Problems, 3 percent

Count

  • Minor problems, 13 percent
  • Many minor, 8 percent
  • Major, 0 percent

Comparison

Comparing the observers’ manual counts to the published results:

  • Exact match, 78 percent
  • Discrepancy attributable to observers’ error, 20 percent (they did not correctly identify which polling place they were reporting from)
  • Discrepancy attributable to election workers’ error, 1 percent
  • Unexplained discrepancy, 1 percent.

Observers’ commentary

When the observers reported irregularities, they were asked to comment
further. So in addition to answering the multiple-choice questions, the
observers left 154 commentaries. These fall into five categories:

  1. Positive, 30 percent
  2. Neutral, 10 percent
  3. Negative in describing minor irregularities, 29 percent
  4. Negative in describing major irregularities, 8 percent
  5. Negative at the beginning but also describing how the situation was
    remedied, 22 percent

These rough characterizations cannot substitute for a reading of the commentaries themselves