By Yusef Taylor, @FlexDan_YT
During the 4th December 2021 Presidential Election, there were a number of concerns raised over the issue of marble tokens not fitting in certain ballot drums. The incident raised suspicion that certain marble boxes are being tampered with to create smaller holes to discourage voters to vote for a particular candidate. However, this notion has been dismissed by the Independent Electoral Commission’s (IEC) Chief Electoral Officer, as an error due to layers of paint reducing the size of openings for marble tokens.
Claim: During the recently organised stakeholder engagement between the IEC and members of Political Parties and the media a similar question was raised by a representative of the Association of National Reorientation and Democracy (ANRD).
According to the ANRD Representative, their party received “complaints last time that the ballot box supplied to polling stations, their holes were too small. The tokens given to some of the electorates were bigger than the holes. I just want you to tell me if that was true and how are you working towards seeing some changes in that?”
Photo Explainer: The Gambia uses a unique voting system called the marble token system instead of the conventional paper ballot voting system. As shown in the image below ballot boxes have a hole in them (pointed by finger) where electorates can cast their vote for the candidate of their choice. When a token is placed in the box of the electorate’s choice a bell sound rings which alerts the polling station staff that an electorate has voted.
According to concerns raised during the 4th December 2021 Presidential Elections the marble tokens could not fit in the holes of the certain ballot boxes seen in the image below. When this happens the polling station staff will not hear the bell sound. Not hearing a bell is a signal that the electorate has not cast their vote. This article discusses the action taken by polling station staff to rectify this problem.
Fact Check: In response to the query raised by an ANRD representative, the IEC’s Chief Electoral Officer, Sambujang Njie explained that the application of layers of paint reduced the size of the openings of the ballot drums and that the issue was rectified immediately. Most importantly Mr Njie noted that there was no premeditated plan to target any particular candidate.
According to Mr Njie “I can tell you the tokens are the same size. What happened is we have received information that some of the tokens could not fit into the holes on election day. This was a big surprise to all of us because these ballot drums were made by an institution very renowned at metalwork that’s GTTI. They’ve tested it given it to us and we deployed our regional offices at the regional offices they also tested it and paint it there in the colour of the candidates giving it to the presiding officers who tested it at the polling station”.
In his explanation, Mr Njie highlighted that “what we thought has caused it may be the paint we have done. When you paint the space becomes smaller. The first paint will be red oxide, then you do the first course and the second course and in order to make it very nice you can do a third course”.
“So, perhaps this has reduced the size of the hole. But it was not something that was intentional. But it was rectified immediately,” said CEO Njie.
Explaining action taken to rectify the situation Mr Njie explained that “I don’t know miraculously or whatever that some of them could not fit in. But when that happened, we gave them pliers to cut the seals in the evening. We said just put the pliers there and turn it so that it will open up but it was not something pre-planned or we made to create any unequal platform”.
Promising to avoid a similar occurrence during the National Assembly Elections scheduled for 9th April 2022 Mr Njie says “this time we will continue the tests but this has never happened”.
Verdict: Reports that ballot boxes contained smaller openings than the marble tokens are TRUE. The IEC and domestic observers both confirmed their occurrence. The issue was said to have been rectified at polling stations by the use of pliers to make the holes bigger and metal files to chip away the paint and open up the hole. This claim is TRUE.
