Monrovia – Monday’s by-elections in Montserrado County were free of any major violent incidents but a familiar showing of irregularities in the voters’ roster again raised eyebrows about the National Elections Commission’s handling of the electorate information – a significant aspect of the democratic process.
Report by Alpha Daffae Senkpeni, [email protected] and Bettie K. Johnson-Mbayo, [email protected]
It was widely expected to be a crunch competition amongst seven senatorial and six representative candidates, drawing the participation of 778,291 voters – mainly for the Senate race – in Liberia’s most populous county.
The rain has always been a nemesis for Liberians but thousands defied nature to show up across the 1,790 polling places across Montserrado County. But an undisclosed number of voters never actually exercised their democratic franchise as provided by the Constitution.
They were not allowed to cast their ballot because their photos on the Final Registration Roll (FRR) did not match their names or vice versa. At some polling places, election workers admitted that there were more photos on the roster as compared to names.
When FrontPageAfrica’s reporters toured several voting precincts in Paynesville, Central Monrovia, Bushrod Island and Gardnesville, they observed that voters were expressing anger that their names were not included in the FRR.
Timothy Teyah, who was an observer of the opposition Liberty Party at the YMCA precinct on Broad Street, said when the polls opened the voter’s registration booklet had names that were not posted on the walls.
“Later, they brought a booklet by 5:30 PM and we raised an alarm because of the time and NEC said five minutes grace period and it was settled. It could be a lost vote for the opposition,” Teyah said.
Mark Freeman, an observer of senatorial candidate MacDella Cooper, was not impressed because this is the day that people should vote their candidate because if someone is denied someone who should not win may likely win.
Voters Turned Away
In Logan Town, Bushrod Island, an FPA reporter, who toured the Elder John Massey School, Abendu Bentsi Elementary School, and St. Edwards Catholic School – all serving as voting precincts – said several people were being turned away while polling staff in some cases were strategizing whether they should allow people to cast their votes or not.
Glady Dahn, 28, currently lives in Paynesville but had to return to District #15 to vote. Although she was overzealous, her name wasn’t found on the FRR at the Abendu Bentsi Elementary School.
Theresa Kallon, 42, said she went at the center three times in search of her name but to no avail. “I was surprised when they said my name was not there, even my two siblings have decided not to come back because we came and they told them that their names were not included,” she explained.
“I don’t know if the polling staffs are trained properly because this will turn out to low interest of voters in this by-election.”
In Slipway Community, Central Monrovia, voters were furious with polling staff, who could not find their names on the roster although their photos were printed in the booklet.
Ciapha Weah, 43, says he was at the center at 8 a.m. but he couldn’t find his name although his photo was seen in the book.
“I have been here since 8 am but the polling staff said my name is not in the book,” he said.
Four other people had a similar concern as polling staff Jeremiah Toe claimed that the problem was rare.
“We don’t know how NEC printed the book, some names are there but no pictures and some have pictures no name,” the polling staff said.
“This is a complete embarrassment to us because the voters are only insulting us and saying we are irresponsible and we don’t know sh**,” exclaimed another polling staff, who refused to mention his name.
“I think whatever in the FRR should have been corroborated with what printed at the entrances of polling stations.”
Francis Johnson, a polling staff at St. Edwards, said they were deciding if the voters would still cast their ballots.
“Our issue here is simple: some of the names have a missing letter so if your name is Brown Wesseh and your last name has ‘G’ at the end of Weah polling staff will grant you access to vote,” Johnson said.
‘Voters Were not Patient’ – NEC
Patricia Davis, NEC District #8 Supervisor, claims some of those who didn’t vote “weren’t patient”.
“Some came in and we urged them to give us some time, in late hours I went to the headquarters and an index was given were I found some names for them to vote,” David said.
“We wouldn’t say the process was straight and was 100 percent successful because no human is perfect but whatever problems we had today’s problem was as a result of the data room of NEC.”
Henry Flomo, NEC Communications Director, told FPA after polling had closed that the Commission setup hotlines to respond to concerns and provide support to voters.
“Maybe people who have problem did not consult but there were lot of people who got help … I know that a lot of problems was resolved but some people were not patient,” said Flomo, who could not say whether the anomalies in the FRR could have been observed before the Election Day or if it could have been averted.
“The reason we put up these hotlines because we know election will not be perfect because these are manual things we’re doing. We are not doing digital – we knew that there will be problems but we didn’t know the exact problem that would have come.”
Opposition Alarm Before Election Day
Some of the challenges that were manifested on Monday were frequently flagged by opposition political parties before the Election Day. The four opposition collaborating political parties had contended that there were “serious discrepancies and inconsistencies” in the voter roll presented them by the NEC.
The parties alarmed that if the “errors”, were not corrected, the by-elections were bound for problems.
According to Mr. Martin Kolleh, who coordinated the campaign teams of Abraham Darius Dillon and Ms. Telia Urey, they had hired a technical team comprising IT specialists and it was them who uncovered “huge contradictions” in the number of registered voters in Montserrado.
“The first stage of our analyses, we were focused on comparing the numbers, second was to match photos on the voters roll of the 2017 against the most recent, the third was to do analysis on the voters ID to know if some IDs are being repeated and lastly was to identify names on the voters roll without pictures,” said Kolleh at a news conference. He added that there were several mistakes identified in the FRR.
Recurrence of the Past?
The hitches during Monday’s polls have been overshadowed by peaceful conduct; however, it mirrors the country’s 2017 historic elections which presidential runoff was delayed after the Liberty Party contested the first round, citing irregularities in the conduct of the elections by the NEC.
LP, which was later backed by Unity Party, claimed that the October 10, 2017 election was marred by fraud and irregularities and fell short of the minimum requirements to be deemed as free, fair and transparent.
Much of the allegation by the LP, at the time, was based on the poor handling of the voters’ roll and other information.
However, the Supreme Court ruled for the election to go on but the concerns about the NEC’s missteps continued to lurk. And with similar errors reoccurring on July 29 in another landmark political contest between a ruling party opting to keep its claws on a stronghold against a sturdy opposition block, there should be no margin for error.