SORTING AND VERIFICATION OF POSTAL BALLOTS IN ALL CENTRES

(May 14th, 2006 No. 92)

The sorting and verification process for ballot papers has today begun at all the four count centres in the Central, Eastern, Western and Northern Divisions.

Election officials are currently sorting and verifying the postal ballots first and then the ordinary ballot papers after. Ordinary ballot papers are the ones from polling stations, while postal ballots are the ones taken from the Returning Officers office by those who cannot vote at where they are registered due to work, old age, sickness and so forth.

Commissioner Central Inoke Devo who is based at the Suva Grammar School count centre said when asked at 4pm this afternoon that they were still tallying the number of postal ballots they had received from all the divisions in the country.

He said officials had verified and sorted postal ballots of the 28 constituencies in the Central division and were working on ballots from the Eastern, Western and Northern divisions.

“So once that is done we will be able to know how many postal ballots will be verified when we finish this exercise tonight,” he said.

Ordinary ballot papers, he said will be verified tomorrow in the 28 count rooms at Suva Grammar.

Assistant Returning Officer Divisional Box Team Central, Peli Doviyaroi said that so far 2600 boxes had been received from the Central and Eastern divisions and they still had yet to sort the Western division boxes and were awaiting the arrival of the boxes from the North.

“We’ve been verifying these boxes and have sorted the eastern postal ballot boxes, we just received western and are currently sorting them out and we are waiting for the Northern to come in this afternoon.”

When counting begins proper in each count centre in the divisions and a candidate is identified to have won the Returning Officers will need to fill all the forms required and clarifications will be made before the RO announces publicly the winner of a constituency.

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