Let the counting begin

No system is foolproof and disputes tend to arise when contests are close.

BY the time you read this column, today's DAP’s Special Congress will be well underway, and it's results might well have been announced.

But the thrust of this column would still be relevant. Which is that whenever votes are counted, controversy is usually not far away.

Whether it is the results of American Idol – did Clay Aiken really lose to Ruben Studdard? - or the 2000 US Presidential Elections – how much did those ‘hanging chads’ determine the outcome in Florida? – counting controversies heat up when contests are close.

No vote counting system is foolproof. There will always be loopholes which people with ill-intentions can exploit. And even if these ill-intentions are not present, there is always the problem of human error.

The challenge facing anyone who is designing a vote counting system and anyone who is overseeing a vote counting process is to minimize these loopholes and to put in enough checks and balances to detect and significantly reduce human error. This is the position I am in as the Returning Officer for the DAP Re-elections this weekend.

We are expecting approximately 2000 delegates to turn up this weekend. This would include potential ‘troublemakers’ who have been sacked from the party but who are eligible to cast a vote because we are using last year’s delegate list.

Counting is unlike the general elections which involves one vote per ballot for a limited number of candidates. For the DAP re-elections, each delegate has to choose 20 candidates out of a list of 68 names.

Any less or more than 20, the ballot is immediately counted as spoilt. In effect, I have to count approximately 40,000 votes (2000 delegates times 20 votes each).

Thankfully, I do not have to count all 40,000 votes myself. We have trained and mobilized 200 counting agents and observers. Each vote would have been scrutinized by at least four people during the counting process.

Each vote would have been read and recorded and then reread and verified again. 10 Assistant Returning Officers (AROs) will monitor these counting agents and observers. 50 auditors from PKF – an international network of firms with offices in 125 countries – will be deployed to scrutinize the entire process.

Detailed SOPs have been developed and vetted by the auditors who will sign-off at important stages in the counting process. And yes, they will also scrutinize our Excel sheets for any ‘errors’.

One of my AROs remarked that this exercise was like preparing for a wedding – with many moving parts where things could potentially go wrong. Except that you don’t have over 100 reporters, 2000 guests, potential troublemakers, 400 volunteers, 50 auditors and over 100 elected representatives at most weddings.

Of course, this re-election would not have been necessary if the error at last year’s National Congress was not revealed after it was discovered. Indeed, no one, not even people involved in the counting process suspected that an error had been made.

If the party leaders had wanted to avoid controversy, they could have easily kept quiet and no one would have been the wiser. I would have known since I was one of the people who was informed about the error when it was discovered. I would have carried the burden to this day. Thankfully the party leaders took away this burden.

The DAP’s experience points to a larger issue facing political parties, especially during this season of party elections. Nobody has really paid close attention to the internal voting processes of party elections.

I suspect that most members are not aware of the internal checks and balances that are in place for let’s say the upcoming UMNO general assembly elections which is supposed to involve 150,000 voting delegates.

I do not support the Registrar of Societies being involved in monitoring party elections especially given the politicized nature of this so-called government department.

It would be far better for members of the respective political parties to demand for greater transparency and scrutiny in their own party elections. The parties should then respond by introducing these mechanisms in the system.

Consideration should be made to also have appeal processes for any aggrieved parties. This is part and parcel of the development of a healthy democracy. Electoral reform should not just involve the Election Commission but also elections within the political parties.

In the meantime, with a prayer or two, some luck, a group of hardworking and diligent assistants and many well-intentioned volunteers, I hope that the DAP re-elections will be absent of controversy and that everything would be OK. Let the counting begin!

Dr. Ong Kian Ming is the Member of Parliament for Serdang. He can be reached at [e-mail]

> The views expressed are entirely the writer's own