Georgetown: The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) on Thursday asked Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield to revise his draft proposal to accommodate additional recommendations made for a national recount of votes cast on March 2, 2020.
Lowenfield’s initial proposal of a 156-day timeline for the recount will likely be reduced following the removal of many of the restrictions. The CEO had proposed three work stations to count the ballots simultaneously.
The six GECOM Commissioners have agreed to retain the Arthur Chung Conference Centre as the venue for the national recount.
It has also been agreed that party agents, electoral observers and CARICOM will be present at the venue. The issue of live streaming the recount has been discussed but has not been finalized. The Chief Elections Officer is expected to present an amended plan on Tuesday.
However, GECOM Commissioners Sase Gunraj said he and his colleagues revised the time frame by increasing the number of work-stations from six to 20 bringing the number of days for the recount to 10.
“With the removal of that restriction, that can be expanded easily,” Gunraj said.
Further, he said Lowenfield’s plan envisages two hours to count one box of ballots but the PPP commissioners have cut that to one hour.
“Why we have done that? There are over one thousand ballot boxes in which there are less than two hundred ballots cast. In fact there are more than two hundred boxes that have less than fifty ballots cast in their boxes. As a consequence, the time for counting of those boxes could not be as burdensome as two hours, all things considered,” he said.
Meanwhile, Government nominated GECOM Commissioner Vincent Alexander said he is not against the proposal to increase the stations but noted that this is dependent on the space and the available human resources from GECOM.
He said the time to count one ballot box is still under consideration and so a starting date and time for the recount is yet to be decided.
“The time to count the ballots is dependent on the things to be done in the process of counting the ballots. There is a variance in this manner. From the inception, we made it very clear that it will not be a mere numerical count,” Alexander said.
The Government nominated GECOM Commissioner explained that the recount entails going through the poll book and counting as though it is being done at the place of polls which includes taking into consideration the number of ballots cast, proxies, spoilt ballots and every other ballot in the box.
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