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
- Unauthorized persons in the voting rooms: 9 percent
- Full presence of party poll-watchers, ruling party and opposition:
98 percent. Just ruling party: 2 percent - Party poll-watchers getting to vote multiple times: 3 percent
- Poll watchers and other partisans outnumbered regular voters: 1 percent
- Security problems: None, 89 percent. Reported to observer but not
actually observed, 5 percent. Observed, 6 percent - Problems in voter access to polling rooms: 14 percent
- Election workers checked voters’ names against the list: 100 percent
- Voters had to sign the signature list before voting: 100 percent
- Violations of the secrecy of the vote: 12 percent
- Acts of intimidation: None, 89 percent. Reported but not observed, 5
percent. Observed, 6 percent - Illegal political activities: None, 90 percent. Reported, 8 percent.
Observed, 2 percent - Persons trying to interrupt the vote: None, 92 percent. Reported, 6
percent. Observed, 1 percent. Armed interrupter, 1 observed - 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:
- Positive, 30 percent
- Neutral, 10 percent
- Negative in describing minor irregularities, 29 percent
- Negative in describing major irregularities, 8 percent
- 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