ISLAMABAD: A countrywide coalition of 30 Pakistani civil society organisations, working together to promote electoral and democratic accountability in Pakistan, has recommended that no election result should be announced in any constituency where women are prevented from voting in any polling station or booth.
In a report, consolidating recommendations for electoral reforms, the Fair and Free Election Network (Fafen) has proposed that vote counts from such polling stations should be excluded from the compilation of the official result and re-polling should take place there.
It said that sex-segregated voters’ turnout should be compiled for each constituency and officially released following the recommended procedures for counting and recording the number of ballots at the polling booths.
The report suggested that special efforts should be made for recruitment, advancement and training of all female staff. Female polling staff should be deployed at all female polling booths to facilitate women voters. More women, ideally 50 percent, should be posted as presiding officers at polling stations.
It recommended that extra steps should be taken to ensure that female polling booths remain open and safe during the full period on the Election Day and that voter identification fraud, assisting voters behind secrecy screens, marking extra ballots and ballot box stuffing and other election malfeasance are not perpetrated in women’s polling booths in particular.
The report proposed that all polling stations should be combined (male and female) stations, rather than all-female or all-male stations.
It claimed that Fafen’s recommendations are based on the statistically valid data gathered by its more than 18,000 observers nationwide between May 2007 and March 2008, the period related to the last general elections.
The report further suggested a ban on announcement of results for constituencies with more than 100 percent voter turnout in any polling station (where votes polled exceed registered electorate) or where women are prevented from voting in any polling station.
Either the vote counts from those polling stations should be excluded from the compilation of the official results or re-polling should take place in those stations.
It also recommended that the relevant laws should be amended to bar candidates from running for office in more than one constituency. It wanted enforcement of ban on openly partisan activities of government officials at all levels, mass transfers of personnel and initiation of new development schemes after the announcement of the elections calendar.
The report said that in 49 of 194 constituencies, 25 percent, one or more polling stations in its sample had voters’ turnout rates equal to or exceeding 100 percent of the number of registered voters published by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) the week preceding the election.
Internews
