Decision made to tabulate SORs daily

May 08, 2020 News

The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has commenced the tabulation of Statements of Recount. This exercise will be conducted on a daily basis as the recount of the March 2, General and Regional Elections continues.
Public Relations Officer of GECOM, Yolanda Ward, made this disclosure yesterday. She explained to media operatives last evening that the Commission made a decision for the tabulation to be conducted every day. The tabulation is expected to last one and a half hours (5 – 6:30PM) daily. Yesterday’s tabulation, however, commenced later than stipulated but Ward was keen to note that the exercise went smoothly.
“It’s a simultaneous process; one screen will project the Statements of Recount (SORs) and another screen where there is an Excel file which the numbers will be plugged into for those of you who have been following the audio,” she said during a press briefing.
She went on to say that an Observation Report (OR) will be displayed with each SOR. This report, as the name suggests, includes several issues that would have arisen during the recount process.
Although the ORs are not read, even though there is a live-stream of the process, Ward said that measures will have to be put in place to ensure that the public can discern what is contained therein.
Against this backdrop, she related that, “We have to look at mechanisms as to how we improve that, so that persons can really benefit from what those observations were, as it relates to that specific box.”
On the other hand, Chairman of the A New United Guyana (ANUG), Timothy Jonas, posited that GECOM should instead continuously generate the SORs after agents would have completed counting the ballot boxes.
Speaking to the media yesterday afternoon, too, Jonas raised his concerns about the transparency of the recount process. He noted that Guyanese, and the world to an extent, desire to know what is happening and how it is happening at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre, the site dedicated to conduct the national recount.
Jonas said too, “My concern is that when the ballot boxes are counted, and Statements of Recount is done, it is my view that those SORs need to be tabulated on an ongoing basis publicly, so that everyone could see that a ballot box is completed.”
Some have argued that this method may not be the best, since it would require more time.

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News