II ~I ~ ~II~ ~~ ~II ~ ~II - IFES

IFES Pre-electionAssessment: Burundishould included on the ballot. For security reasons, the ballots should be printed with a serialnumber on a removable stub. Ballots be printed in booklets of 100s and 50s, along with othersecurity provisions to prevent any easy reproduction of the ballot.The IFES Team also recommends that names on the ballot appear in the chronological orderin which the candidates filed their candidacy. This method should be used for all elections.All the ballots should be initialled or stamped by the president of the polling station prior to theopening of the polling station. This would facilitate the count in the event that extra ballots arefound in the ballot box at the end of the day. Those without the mark of the president of thepolling station would not be counted.Ballot BoxAccording to information supplied to the IFES team, the country has about 2,800 ballot boxes.These are of excellent metal quality. They lock with screws which are applied at the openingof the voting day. Half of the ballot boxes are black while the other half are white. This canbe most confusing although they were meant to ease the process. For the referendum, theelector was asked to place the ballot in the white box if he favoured the Constitution and placethe ballot in the black box if not. Two boxes were placed in the voting compartment out ofsight of anyone. This method leads to potential fraud and stuffing of the ballot boxes, andthis practice cannot be recommended to continue.Each polling station had four voting compartments, using a total of eight ballot boxes. TheIFES team recommends that two ballot boxes be placed in full view of the personnel in thepolling station; that the ballot boxes at each station be of the· same color; that the elector berequested to mark the ballot, fold it and return it to the polling station personnel; and that thestub be removed and the ballot placed in the ballot box in full view of the personnel andobservers. Two ballot boxes per polling station are recommended because of their relativelysmall size. Two boxes may be required to accommodate the ballots.34