Why election results in Africa are so slow
By Elizabeth Blunt
Africa analyst
27 October 2015
From the section Africa
Image copyright Getty Images
Sunday was a busy day for elections around
the world. Results from Argentina, Guatemala
and Poland were announced within hours, but
election officials say results from Tanzania,
Ivory Coast and the Congo referendum will
take several days.
Everyone hates a slow election process.
It's not just the voters and the candidates,
desperate to know the results.
It's also the election staff, who probably got
up before dawn to prepare the polling station,
worked all day running the voting, stayed up
most of the night counting the ballots and
then had to take the results to a central point
and wait for hours, sometimes days, to see
their results safely received and entered into
the system.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo capital
Kinshasa in 2011, I remember presiding
officers at the tally centre, fast asleep on top
of their sacks of ballot papers; in Nigeria the
same year, I watched as the Edo state election
commissioner, red-eyed and grey with fatigue,
waited for the last results - carried by canoe
and motor boat - to finally arrive from the
creeks of the Niger Delta.
Presidentially slow
The problem is not a lack of technology.
The UK still uses the most primitive of voting
systems - paper ballots, physically carried to
the counting centre and counted by hand.
But the UK, like Poland, which voted at the
weekend, and India, the biggest democracy of
all, has a big advantage.
It's a parliamentary system, so the election in
each constituency is complete in itself and can
be declared immediately; there is no need to
wait for results from the whole country to
know who the next president will be.
Apart from Ethiopia, most African countries
have presidential systems, and these are
inevitably slower.
Fears of fraud
The other advantage the UK has is one of
trust.
Where there has been very little past fraud,
there is no need for time-consuming
safeguards.
Polling officials could simply phone their
result in to the national election commission,
and no-one would doubt them. But unhappily
that is not the case in most of Africa.
The Edo State results had to be brought
physically to Benin City so that the
commissioner could see that the results
sheets had not been altered and all the party
agents had signed that they were correct.
And the commissioner then had to get on a
plane and personally fly to the capital, Abuja,
carrying the State results sheets (again,
signed by all parties) to the national election
headquarters.
No wonder the process takes time.
And physically transporting results is not
foolproof.
Sometimes the results which arrive are not the
same as those which left.
In the DR Congo, the European Union noted
that the results its observers had seen in
Katanga province were not the same as those
later declared in Kinshasa.
So that's why conscientious officials slept on
top of their ballot papers.
Attempts to speed up the process with modern
technology have not been a great success.
Malawi bought a sophisticated electronic
transmission system for its elections last year,
but it was so sophisticated that most districts
could not get it to work.
The fax system used as a back-up collapsed
under the strain, and in the end, after days of
delay, the results were hand-carried to the
national headquarters.
Where machines are used, the best systems
have been the simplest.
India uses small voting machines, powered by
batteries. They are not connected to phone
lines or the internet.
They simply keep a record of the votes cast,
locked inside, and are safely stored until the
time comes to count.
Indian elections are so huge that voting days
in different areas are spread over several
weeks, but the count itself goes quickly.
In Malawi rumours of manipulation were rife,
and this is the problem when results are
delayed.
Phoning it in
Mobile phones have been a game-changer.
Political parties and and local observer groups
can now run their own parallel counts.
Because they trust their agents, local results
are simply phoned in to the national
headquarters.
Typically these parties and civil society
organisations know the election result long
before it is officially declared.
This can be an effective check on fraud, but
where people think they already know the
result, yet there is no declaration, they get
suspicious.
Even where there is a ban on declaring these
unofficial results, eventually they begin to leak
out.
Of course, sometimes the results are being
massaged, but even where they aren't, trust is
undermined.
Yes, logistics in Africa are challenging and
communications are unreliable, but above all
it is the need for multiple layers of safeguards
which makes these election processes
cumbersome.
But until everyone is prepared to trust a
simpler system, African voters will just have to
keep waiting, and waiting, for their results.
More on elections across Africa
October is Africa's election month
Tanzania's nail-biting election
Is Ivory Coast ready for presidential elections?
The speedy UK elections through Ghanaian
eyes
Elizabeth Blunt has reported on African
elections since 1979, and has also served as
an election observer for the Commonwealth
and the European Union.
By Elizabeth Blunt
Africa analyst
27 October 2015
From the section Africa
Image copyright Getty Images
Sunday was a busy day for elections around
the world. Results from Argentina, Guatemala
and Poland were announced within hours, but
election officials say results from Tanzania,
Ivory Coast and the Congo referendum will
take several days.
Everyone hates a slow election process.
It's not just the voters and the candidates,
desperate to know the results.
It's also the election staff, who probably got
up before dawn to prepare the polling station,
worked all day running the voting, stayed up
most of the night counting the ballots and
then had to take the results to a central point
and wait for hours, sometimes days, to see
their results safely received and entered into
the system.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo capital
Kinshasa in 2011, I remember presiding
officers at the tally centre, fast asleep on top
of their sacks of ballot papers; in Nigeria the
same year, I watched as the Edo state election
commissioner, red-eyed and grey with fatigue,
waited for the last results - carried by canoe
and motor boat - to finally arrive from the
creeks of the Niger Delta.
Presidentially slow
The problem is not a lack of technology.
The UK still uses the most primitive of voting
systems - paper ballots, physically carried to
the counting centre and counted by hand.
But the UK, like Poland, which voted at the
weekend, and India, the biggest democracy of
all, has a big advantage.
It's a parliamentary system, so the election in
each constituency is complete in itself and can
be declared immediately; there is no need to
wait for results from the whole country to
know who the next president will be.
Apart from Ethiopia, most African countries
have presidential systems, and these are
inevitably slower.
Fears of fraud
The other advantage the UK has is one of
trust.
Where there has been very little past fraud,
there is no need for time-consuming
safeguards.
Polling officials could simply phone their
result in to the national election commission,
and no-one would doubt them. But unhappily
that is not the case in most of Africa.
The Edo State results had to be brought
physically to Benin City so that the
commissioner could see that the results
sheets had not been altered and all the party
agents had signed that they were correct.
And the commissioner then had to get on a
plane and personally fly to the capital, Abuja,
carrying the State results sheets (again,
signed by all parties) to the national election
headquarters.
No wonder the process takes time.
And physically transporting results is not
foolproof.
Sometimes the results which arrive are not the
same as those which left.
In the DR Congo, the European Union noted
that the results its observers had seen in
Katanga province were not the same as those
later declared in Kinshasa.
So that's why conscientious officials slept on
top of their ballot papers.
Attempts to speed up the process with modern
technology have not been a great success.
Malawi bought a sophisticated electronic
transmission system for its elections last year,
but it was so sophisticated that most districts
could not get it to work.
The fax system used as a back-up collapsed
under the strain, and in the end, after days of
delay, the results were hand-carried to the
national headquarters.
Where machines are used, the best systems
have been the simplest.
India uses small voting machines, powered by
batteries. They are not connected to phone
lines or the internet.
They simply keep a record of the votes cast,
locked inside, and are safely stored until the
time comes to count.
Indian elections are so huge that voting days
in different areas are spread over several
weeks, but the count itself goes quickly.
In Malawi rumours of manipulation were rife,
and this is the problem when results are
delayed.
Phoning it in
Mobile phones have been a game-changer.
Political parties and and local observer groups
can now run their own parallel counts.
Because they trust their agents, local results
are simply phoned in to the national
headquarters.
Typically these parties and civil society
organisations know the election result long
before it is officially declared.
This can be an effective check on fraud, but
where people think they already know the
result, yet there is no declaration, they get
suspicious.
Even where there is a ban on declaring these
unofficial results, eventually they begin to leak
out.
Of course, sometimes the results are being
massaged, but even where they aren't, trust is
undermined.
Yes, logistics in Africa are challenging and
communications are unreliable, but above all
it is the need for multiple layers of safeguards
which makes these election processes
cumbersome.
But until everyone is prepared to trust a
simpler system, African voters will just have to
keep waiting, and waiting, for their results.
More on elections across Africa
October is Africa's election month
Tanzania's nail-biting election
Is Ivory Coast ready for presidential elections?
The speedy UK elections through Ghanaian
eyes
Elizabeth Blunt has reported on African
elections since 1979, and has also served as
an election observer for the Commonwealth
and the European Union.
