Polling Station Corruption

[roctt]

This kind of madness hopefully will end May 24th.....

http://www.trinivoices.com/index.pl/article?id=286577




The Competencies of Polling Day Staff.
Date: May 19, 2010
By: j. lee-beepat

Although being a mere thirty (30) years old, I have worked on four of our country's elections, three general elections and one local election. I have worked in varying positions, the last of which was a presiding officer. As has become customary, I again applied to work, this time as a deputy presiding officer. I took the classes and sat the exam. Today I was appointed a poll clerk. But get this. The person appointed as deputy presiding officer never worked an election before and resided in San Juan. When I approached the lady at the desk she said that I probably did not work in that area before, note that my address has not changed since the first time that I worked. Then she said that I probably scored low on the test. She then advised me to speak to Mrs. Wright, the Returning Officer.
Mrs. Wright's response to this was that she had over 300 persons to place and that I probably scored low. I returned to the desk and asked what was my score and was told 85% and was told that this was low because alot of persons scored 90 to 100%. I later returned and asked the lady at the desk to remind me of my score of which she replied 90%. I perused the front page of the list. Persons scoring 85% were placed as Presiding Officers and I with my years of experience and a score of 90% on the test was placed to work as a poll clerk with a deputy presiding officer who has no work experience.
Is there no end to the corruption in this country? Is corruption filtering through to even the most menial of tasks? How will the elections be free and fair when the simple selection of polling day staff that it to be based on experience and you score in the test isn't even free and fair? How can the polling day staff work efficiently if they are placed on a friendly basis and not on the criterion stated? What is Trinidad coming to?

Mrs. J. Lee-Beepat
19-05-2010

[Damien]

Let the voter padding begin, pnm will do everything that they can to win this election including cheating the system, it was mentioned last night that only five persons from caricom coming to witness the election as well which is below its normal amount

[Goolie]

Jack Warner was supposed to have a meeting with the EBC this morning to straighten out issues in preparation for next monday. I hope we have a fair election/count of votes/no voter padding etc.

[hydroep]

I'm really wondering what checks and balances are in place.

I understand for instance that the ballot boxes are not checked in the polling stations themselves. Instead, they are transported to a central location within a constituency, opened and checked.

The boxes are supposed to be transported from the polling stations to this central location by an official "election" vehicle. Sometimes private entities/people are contracted to provide this service.

The problem is that there's the possibility of tampering/switching he boxes during that transport phase.

If I remember correctly during the last General Election there was some controversy involving one of these official transport vehicles. It was discovered somewhere in Ste. Madeline with ballot boxes in it's trunk.

I cannot recall what became of the matter though.

In any event, I hope that proper systems have been put in place to deal with weaknesses in the system this time around.