Mesn lobbies for parallel vote tally
The Malawi Electoral Support Network (Mesn) has started rallying support from stakeholders on its plans to have a Parallel Voter Tabulation (PVT) system during the May 20 2014 Tripartite Elections.
The initiative did not receive support in the last election.
Mesn on Tuesday held a consultative meeting in Lilongwe with accredited civil society organisations (CSOs) which have roles to play in the coming tripartite elections on the specific plans for PVT.
In his address, Mesn chairperson Steven Duwa said PVT was an election monitoring method which would allow independent and non-partisan observers to assess electoral processes on the day of voting, including vote tabulation.
Unlike in 2009, Mesn plans to deploy 84 long-term observers, 800 PVT observers and 1 500 general observers who would be deployed to most polling stations across the country.
Said Duwa: “We would like to share with our partners what we intend to do during observation of elections. We want to engage fellow civil society organisations to move together because we have seen the need for an independent party to provide checks and balances in the upcoming election.”
Although the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) has welcomed the idea of PVT, it has warned Mesn to conduct a universal PVT not sampling a few polling stations.
Duwa said MEC’s position was of no consequence to their plans because there is no law that stops anyone from running a PVT and MEC had duly encouraged those with capacity to go ahead.
Although MEC had initially resisted PVT in the 2009 elections, Mesn has argued that results announced by the electoral body and Mesn were within the right margin of error.
“This time around, MEC will do its usual business of conducting elections and voter counting. MEC will be bringing results slowly while PVT will use new technology and we will analyse and share results with other stakeholders,” Duwa said.
It is expected that the 2014 election would be a close race and PVT would minimise disputes over presidential results but also bring confidence in the electoral process.
The National Democratic Institute (NDI) funded programme will also be extended to political parties.
