TALKING POINTS

As you are aware nominations for the Presidency have closed and the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) in their press conference on Tuesday at Radio and Television Afghanistan announced the names of the candidates. For your interest, to the left of me is a mock up of the actual ballot paper, which will be used at the election. I would ask you if you are photographing it please do not photograph it in minor detail. The colors will change slightly in any case before it’s printed. But you will all understand the reasons for that request.

Other things that are going on in our universe at the moment include the acquisition of 30,000 ballot boxes for the election. We are hoping that they will be in the country next week and that we can start to distribute those to the regions and the provinces. We will also be acquiring polling kits -one polling kit per polling stations - that will contain all the forms, stationery and ancillary equipment needed to conduct of the poll.

Now that the ballot paper design has been approved by the JEMB printing will commence very shortly. We hope to have ballot papers in the country sometime in September. We also have to identify the 5,000 polling centers that will be needed to service what looks like 10 million prospective voters at the presidential election. That work is under way at the moment. Each of the provincial field coordinators is identifying those sites, which will service, with the greatest convenience, the maximum number of voters. This is the sort of work in which I’m involved and I’d be glad to answer your questions if I can and help you.

Questions and Answers

Question: By which date will the counting of votes be completed

Elections Operations Advisor: Our intention as far as possible is to count the votes from each province in that province. There will, however, be exception to that rule, for the most part when suitable premises cannot be identified to conduct the count in a particular province. We have no firm plan for the completion of the count. It will be when it is done. We will first of all have to receive the ballot boxes from the polling centers at the counting centers. Then we will have to reconcile the ballot papers we will have to mix them so that votes from individual villages in that province cannot be identified. So the result when the count takes place is representative of the vote the province as a whole. And we will then have to carry out the count. This could take two or three weeks. But we have no firm notion as to the precise time it will take and when the announcement of the results will be made.

There will however be progressive results both as to turn out as to the number of voters who have actually gone to record their vote, and progressive results from each province as they are counted. So there will be figures becoming available and if the result of the election is reasonably clear, a clear picture emerging of the likely eventual winner before that period of two or three weeks that I’ve spoken about.

Question: You mentioned about 30,000 ballot boxes. What is the number polling stations and will there be separate polling for men and women?

Elections Operations Advisor: I’ll answer your last question first. Males and females will vote at separate polling stations. That is an absolute rule across Afghanistan. Across the country there will be up to 5,000 polling centers. These are sites where people go to vote. Within those polling centers there will be up to 25,000 thousand polling stations. These are work units consisting of five polling officials with the capacity to process or service about up to 600 voters each during the course of the day.

There will be no auditory size of a polling center. That would be according to the number of voters registered in the area served by the polling center. So in Kabul where we have suitable buildings we may have some quite large polling centers perhaps containing for the sake of argument 10 or 12 polling stations. In the case of a small village the polling centre will likely contain only one male and one female polling station. So they will vary in size according to the number of registered voters.

Question: How long will the voting process take?

Elections Operations Advisor: Voting will be on a single day unless there is a compelling reason to postpone polling in any place. The general principle is that the voting will take place on a single day between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. on Saturday 9 October.

Question: Can you tell us about the deployment of security for the polling stations?

Elections Operations Advisor: The Afghan National Police will provide primary security and area security will be provided by other security components within Afghanistan. I don’t think that I can answer your question more than in those general terms because security is not my area of expertise.

Question: What is the status of run-offs if there is need for one after the first round?

Elections Operations Advisor: The electoral law requires the run-off election to be conducted within two weeks of the announcement of the results of the first round election. Logistically you can imagine that we will have to get new ballot papers printed. We will first of all have to identify the two candidates who are qualified to take part in the run-off elections and then print ballot papers. And we have the additional problem of Ramadan occurring during late October early November. The decision is one that is very clearly for the JEMB to make. But I guess that is fair to say that given those logistical constraints, you will probably be looking of around five or six weeks in that general order for the run-off election to occur. But please do not think that I’m preempting the decision of the JEMB in giving that answer.

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