Uniform procedures for ensuring payment of polling station officials should be enacted.

Polling stations should only be established in places accessible to the general public and where the KPU can exercise its authority.

The re-qualification of invalid votes should be done in a first instance at the intermediate level in order to facilitate the final results tabulation.

Timely publication of complete and accurate results from polling station to national level.

The serial number that every ballot slip has should be removed in order to maximize voter’s rights to secrecy. The number allows identifying who vote for whom and thus
violates the secrecy of voting in case where a recounting might be undertaken.

Another practice which should be avoided in future is counting the vote in the dark. Electric or other lighting was not totally guaranteed by the electoral authority for the counting of the ballot.(…)

When the voting papers have been completed, they should be returned to the box and it should be sealed in the presence of party agents. Ballot boxes should be transported in a manner, which guarantees that there will be no tampering. The period of time between the preliminary results and the official results should be reduced to avoid any allegation of manipulations. Furthermore, transparency could be considerably enhanced if results were displayed immediately on the ECP website once they have been received by the Returning Officer, thus reflecting the progress of the aggregation process.

It is also recommended that ballot papers arriving after the close of poll on Election Day at the Returning Officer’s office should not be allowed. By doing so, the Returning Officer can include the postal ballots in the preliminary results. By authorising Presiding Officers to count doubtful ballots in polling stations and allow Returning Officers to count postal ballots at the close of the poll the ECP can do away with the consolidation of the results by ROs.

Postal ballot procedures should be duly implemented in a timely manner by the Election Commission, to avoid disenfranchising many voters on Election Day.

Postal ballots should not be counted separately. They should be mixed with ordinary ballot papers to protect the secrecy of the ballot.

Current provisions limiting the capacity assigned to each polling board (mesa) of 200, max. 300 voters seems inadequate. More flexibility is advisable, since polling boards in highly urbanised areas could easily accommodate up to 700 voters each, while smaller-sized arrangements could continue to be applicable to outlying regions. Under the present set-up, the 92.000 PHVDV country-wide have required the recruitment of a mesa-staff of roughly 550.000 persons, with the ensuing difficulties to find enough people able and willing to take over these functions. Two complementary measures might alleviate the situation: A concentration of urban area polling boards could reduce the number of qualified mesa- staff required; and offering higher per diem allowances for polling board staff, matched by reducing or relinquishing the fines in case
of default (currently ca. US-$ 35) might then provide incentives for prospective mesa- staff members to feel more deeply identified with the civic obligation of serving on polling boards.

Voter secrecy must be safeguarded. Senior Presiding Officers must be instructed that in arranging their polling stations they must ensure that while they maintain an overview,
the voter can vote in secret. Proper voting booths should be designed and provided.

The feasibility of starting the count when the first box arrives rather than waiting for all boxes to come in should be examined.