| But, with all that disturbing behavior, the Elections and Boundaries Department still has to diligently prepare for the biggest election of 2015. As you would imagine, the logistics for a countrywide mobilization of the voters is no easy task, and there are scores of variables. So today, the Department hosted a meeting with the agents and representatives of the different political parties to lay down the usual ground rules.
The Chief Elections Officer told us that she and her staff - like the rest of the country - suspected that the General Elections were close, and so they started to make preparations before the Prime Minister announced the date:
Josephine Tamai, Chief Elections Officer
"We had sent out an invitation for political parties prospective candidates to attend meeting. It is something that is traditional. Whenever we going into an election we sit and we do basically like a refresher training for them, so that they understand the processes. Because in this we are all stakeholders and we need to ensure or remind persons of the laws as it relates to an election. We need to inform them of what policies, what practices will be in place on that day. We finalized the list of nominations stations, polling stations, counting stations. We explain that counting will be done simultaneously, because we want to get the results out. The number of agents that would be allowed in the polling and counting stations and how they are appointed and other matters we discussed this morning."
"We've had so many elections in this year and we are always prepared. We have been preparing even before an election date was announced, because we got the sense that elections would have been called at any point in time, so we had to ensure that we were ready at any point in time. So we started preparing from very early and like I said when the date was announced, it was only then that we realized okay we only have a short period of time to get things done. So we ensure that we got adequate staffing."
Daniel Ortiz
"Are you assured that everything will be in place for November 4th?"
Josephine Tamai, Chief Elections Officer
"Yes. Without a doubt."
So, what about the voters? That's a usually divisive topic, since there is always some complaint or another that voter fraud is afoot with double registrations and other election irregularities.
Given that there was no re-registration exercise, how confident is the Elections and Boundaries Department about the integrity of the voters' lists in the 31 constituencies around the country? Here's what the Chief Election's Officer had to say about that one:
Daniel Ortiz
"How confident are you of these lists that have been released?"
Josephine Tamai, Chief Elections Officer
"Well like I mentioned, this is a process that is ongoing every single month. For some reason we find that whenever an election is being called, it is then that persons get interested in terms of looking at the list. But these lists are approved every single month. The list that we are utilizing at this point is the same list that exist every single month. It's nothing new."
The cut-off date to register or transfer your vote to another constituency for this election was September 9. So, if you registered or transferred after that date, you will not be able to vote in this upcoming election.
| 