Poll move made to cut complaints

National

OPEN and regional candidates in Southern  Highlands will nominate one counting official each while polling officials will remain at their stations to avoid controversy, allegations and claims, election manager David Wakias says.
He said the slight changes will “give the ownership of running the election back to the people”.
During a forum in Mendi last week, Wakias  urged the open and regional candidates to raise any concern.
He said the new approach would help clear the minds of people if they had any doubt about  corrupt practices in the running of the election.
He told the public that polling officials including presiding officers, assistant presiding officers, clerks, doorkeepers and ballot box guards selected would go back to their voting centres to conduct polling.
“Election officials from one polling station will not be allowed to interfere with other election officials in their own polling stations during the election,” he said.
Wakias, who successfully conducted the 2007 and 2012 national elections in the province as election manager, said he wanted people to take ownership.
“If anything goes wrong or if they disrupted the polling process, then they have to blame themselves and not anybody else,” he said.
He said that during the counting both open and regional candidates would appoint and send a counting official during the counting to represent them.
He said that this would be apart from the scrutineers.
The nominated counting officials would  join the other counting officials.
Wakias said that he came up with the new approach after experiencing many issues, suspicions and threats in past elections.
He said the new approach would help clear any doubts that the supporters and candidates may have.
He said counting for the open and regional seats would be conunder one shelter.