Elections Commission: Illegal activities were evident during Thimarafushi ballot counting

Voting at the ballot box in Thaa atoll Thimarafushi during the parliamentary elections held on 9 May didn’t go as it was intended and several illegal activities were also carried out rather obviously during the procedure, the Elections Commission has said.

In an interview with the media on Friday night, Elections Commissions member Mohamed Mahir said that the report submitted by the official overseeing the voting process at the No. 1 ballot box in Thimarafushi indicated that 115 ballot papers had gone missing and that such an incident would compromise the validity of the vote.

“The way I see it, even if it was empty ballot papers or marked ballot papers, the fact that they had gone missing is cause for concern,” Mahir said. “The ballot would be valid if the marked papers and counterfoil added up. If some of the ballot papers were counted, some had gone missing, and others papers weren’t counted then this raises questions about the validity of the ballot.”

He said that while reviewing the video footage of the scene when the ballot box from Thimarafushi had been emptied onto the table for counting, they had seen a large number of people gather around the table, in direct violation of procedure, and some had even taken some of the ballot papers.