Haiti’s electoral authorities begin deliberating Tuesday whether they should annul results of the disputed presidential election’s first round, as recommended by a special commission that reported finding significant fraud. Electoral council chief Leopold Berlanger declined to comment on the verification commission’s findings Monday night, saying his panel would need until June 6 to examine the report and announce a new election calendar for this troubled country. The Provisional Electoral Council has the final say on election matters. The leader of the verification commission, Pierre Francois Benoit, told The Associated Press that members of his panel were so troubled by their month-long review that they had no choice but to recommend starting over and scrapping a presidential run-off vote that has been postponed three times. The panel examined 25 per cent of the roughly 13,000 tally sheets from polling stations.
The commission was formed by interim President Jocelerme Privert, who took power in February amid the continuing electoral impasse due to a widespread perception of electoral fraud. “After digging into it, we started seeing a pattern where a lot of votes could not be traced to a voter or to a group of voters. I call them ‘zombie votes’,” Benoit told the AP.
Concurring with what Haitian observer groups said shortly after the October 25 election, Benoit said numerous accreditation issued for political party representatives appeared to facilitate multiple voting because “many people voted more than once”. He said the conduct of a number of polling station workers was questionable.
Full Article: Haiti council starts deliberating on possible election redo – News – JamaicaObserver.com.