In its final report on the elections released on Wednesday, the EU Elections Observer Mission says even though it noted widespread minor discrepancies in the tallies, the differences were less than one per cent.
“This can be accounted for on the whole by tallying errors, as intention to cheatwould normally be indicated by much larger differences in the numbers,” says the report released by Chief Observer Alojz Peterle. “There was no overall pattern favouring one candidate or another…The one per cent figure tends to imply tallying errors rather than fraud.”
The observers carried out comparisons based on sets of results obtained at the close of tallying or afterwards.
“These revealed relatively small inconsistencies, particularly between results announced at the constituency or county level, as compared with official results published at the national level,” reads the report. “This may be explained by insufficient clear procedures and training, inadequate tools and human error under pressure.”
Tallying of results, the document says, was not transparent, beginning with theabsence of detailed procedural guidelines in the public domain.
Even though observers and party agents had access to constituency and county tallying centres, it says, they could not closely follow the process.
Mr Peterle pointed out the failure on the application of technology as one of the major let-downs of the election. This, he said, was due to the attempt to introduce new technology less than a year and in some cases, months prior to the elections.
The observers also reveal Electronic Voter Identification Devices were not workingor were used in about half the polling stations they observed.
- Daily Nation
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