Official Election Results Withheld Not to Trigger Early Election Petitions

The Electoral Commissioner Faimalōmatumua Mathew Lemisio correcting the Vaimauga 4 results from Friday.

By Lagi Keresoma

APIA, SAMOA – 12 APRIL 2021: The Electoral Commissioner, Faimalōmatumua Mathew Lemisio is withholding the release of each electoral constituency’s official election result after the official count that started yesterday.

He said once the official results are posted, it also marks the start for the ten day period for an election petition to be lodged.

“We wanted the results to be released once it’s counted, however if we release the results early, this will trigger an early election petition by a candidate and by the time the court cases are being heard, we are still counting the other constituencies,” he explained to the media.

He has decided however to release the official results to candidates and scrutineers only but the results will not be posted on the blackboards where some of the constituencies’ results from last Friday are still incomplete.

The official count started at 9.00 yesterday morning with the 4 Vaimauga constituencies. The process involves the scrutineers and the Office of the Electoral Commission first scrutinizing the electoral roll for each constituency, before votes are counted and any discrepancy should be identified against the electoral rolls just checked

By 8.00pm last night, the final count started for all Vaimauga constituencies while the electoral rolls for the 4 Faleata constituencies started at around 4.00pm.

“This is not a new process,” he said, “and it could take a week for it to be finalized.”

The official count for each constituency in progress and is open to the public.

He also confirmed that the writ from the Head of State is that the count must be completed by 26 April 2021.

“But we do not want to rush the counting especially with the tight result from last Friday’s preliminary count,” he said.

When asked about the results 25-25 tie between HRPP and FAST, he said it’s based on the preliminary results.

The result was pre-empted by the media and the OEC’s office has yet to be declared the provisional results which was based on results announced at the polling booths. However, these results are still incomplete on the blackboards used by the office to record each constituency’s polling booths results as the official count began.

“We will only comment on what the final official result is,” he said.

Rude comments closes OEC Facebook page
The lack of clarity on the results from the OEC’s office has triggered negative feedback on the OEC’s Facebook page that had updated and kept the public informed of the outcome of the general election. As a result, the page has been closed temporarily.

This is due to rude and angry comments posted on the page against the office.

Clarifying the delay with other polling booths results
Faimalōmatumua has also clarified why there are still no results posted from Fridays election for some of the polling booths.

This is due to the election supervisors at these polling booths not following the process after the voting closed.

He said after releasing the preliminary results to the main headquarters, they had to bring the result paper with them and the sealed ballot boxes.

However, some had put the results papers inside the sealed ballot boxes and these boxes cannot be opened until the official count which started yesterday.

One such incident happened at the Vaimauga 4 polling booth at EFKS Moata’a where the result kept changing.

During the sorting of special votes last Saturday afternoon, the result paper from that polling booth was found inside the special vote ballot box and Faimalōmatumua then corrected the result on the blackboard in front of the scrutineers for the Vaimauga 4 candidates.

The results had HRPP candidate Lenata’i Victor Tamapua ahead of a tight challenge from Tautua candidate, Tamaletā Taimang Jensen and maintains the 25-25 tie between HRPP & FAST.

Still, several electoral constituencies’ provisional results are incomplete from last Friday.