SIEC receives new voting screens
SIEC Commissioner Taeasi Sanga, Commission Chair Ajilon Nasiu, SIEC Chief Electoral Officer Mose Saitala, Outgoing New Zealand Deputy High Commissioner Tim Breese and incoming New Zealand Deputy High Commissioner Hannah Van Voorthuysen
The Solomon Islands Electoral Commission has received four thousand voting screens to be used in the 2019 National General elections.
Funded by the New Zealand Government, the screens arrived in the country yesterday.
The screens have written instructions in pidgin for voters on what to do, before casting their ballot paper.
Chief Electoral Officer Mose Saitala said this will increase the secrecy of ballot papers.
“It will also decrease the chance of higher spoilt ballot papers because of the instructions that is quite clear. I understand in the past, people instead of ticking the names, they just tick the instructions.
“I hope the way we designed it now will help increase the validity of votes.”
Meanwhile, Mr Saitala announced that the Commission will approve the final voters list for the 2019 National Genera elections on Friday.
He said it will be available to the public as of next week.
“It will be available as of next week. We will try our best to get it up on the web site so that it can be readily available to everyone this weekend if we can. But otherwise it should be available from next week.”
By: Kikiva Tuni