GECOM reaches 100 ballot boxes during Sunday’s recount

– Region 3 recount certified
– 1739 of 2339 ballot boxes counted so far

For the first time since the National Recount at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC) started 27 days ago, the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has recounted 100 ballot boxes, an unprecedented high.

This was revealed at the conclusion of the exercise on Sunday and brings the total number of ballot boxes counted to date up to 1739 of 2339. Therefore, only 600 boxes remain to be counted from the four remaining Electoral Districts.
Of the 100 boxes counted today, 41 were from Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica); 34 from Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne);10 from Region Nine (Upper Takatu-Upper Essequibo) and 15 from Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice). It is understood that there are only two more ballot boxes to be counted for Region Nine, which means it is likely to be certified today.
On Saturday, the count for Region Eight (Potaro-Siparuni) was completed and its one counting station was assigned to Region Four. The same is expected to happen after Region Nine is completed since District Four has the most boxes remaining to be counted.
Meanwhile, Sunday’s exercise also saw the completion of the tabulation process for Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara). However, the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) has once again refused to sign the Tabulation Certificate.
This is despite the fact that the results of the recount tabulation are almost the same as what was declared by the District’s Returning Officer, Mohanlall Jagdeo, on March 4, 2020. According to the initial declarations, PPP/C had won District Three with a total of 47,855 votes while the APNU/AFC secured 23,811.
Meanwhile, the certified recount figures awarded the PPP/C 47,851 votes and 23,808 votes to the coalition. On Saturday, the coalition had also refused to sign the Tabulation Certificate for Region Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni), despite the fact that it won that region.
It was the same story on Wednesday last, when GECOM completed tabulating the votes for all the ballot boxes for Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice), but APNU/AFC refused to sign off on the certification.
APNU/AFC has raised objections to the fact that the certificates of district tabulation contain the words “valid votes”, due to their contention that there was electoral fraud. However, several of their allegations, of dead and migrated electors having voted on Election Day, have already been disproved.
As recently as Saturday, some of these claims fell to pieces when APNU/AFC Campaign Manager Joseph Harmon in a video broadcast claimed that GECOM is yet to “positively” respond to their allegations. He had even gone on to cite some examples of these discrepancies.
Harmon had claimed that 352 ballots were issued for ballot box 7079 (Region Seven, Cuyuni-Mazaruni, Phillipai Primary School), but 377 ballots were discovered in the ballot boxes. This, however, is not true, as a fact check of the Statement of Recount (SoR) for ballot box 7079 shows that 227 votes were actually cast, of which 223 were valid votes.
The SoR was completed and certified by all the parties, including an APNU/AFC counting agent, on May 28 – two days before Harmon’s comment.
According to the SoR, the four rejected ballots contained one that was unmarked or voided for uncertainty, one that was marked in a way that the elector could be identified and two whereby the elector voted for more than one party.
Meanwhile, another example Harmon gave on Saturday of alleged ‘fraud’, which upon checking turned out to be untrue, was that the wrong list was found in ballot box 7003 (Region Seven, Regina’s Shop).
Harmon’s claim falls apart when one checks the observation report for that ballot box, which states that box 7002 was mixed up with box 7003 at the time of the recount and that “no other error was found with this box.” Again, this report was signed off by political parties that included APNU/AFC.