Observer thoughts on Sudan’s election

Deborah Brown, an MA student in the Democracy and Governance Program at Georgetown, is in Juba, Sudan as an election monitor. She emailed me her thoughts on what she has seen thus far — pix later.

I’m down in Juba as part of the Cordoba Initiative’s election observation mission. The political climate in South Sudan seems entirely isolated from all of the controversy we saw in the news leading up to Sudan’s national elections. No one seems to care about the presidential race or the last minute boycotts from opposition groups. The people here are overwhelmingly focused on “getting on” with the election so that they can hold the 2011 referendum to secede from the northern government. People seem to complacently accept Bashir’s presidential victory and the SPLM generally dominates most races here.  Based on our meetings with NDI, IRI, IFES, and other groups, the SPLM still enjoys support, mainly for lack of an alternative. In several governor races, independent candidates pose a challenge to the SPLM incumbents, but these independents tend to be former SPLM members who broke split with the party when they did not receive the party nomination. This is the case in Central Equatoria, the state in which I am observing. More on this in my following post. Below is a summary of what we observed on the first day of polling:

Overall, the Juba team found polling April 11, 2010 to be relaxed, calm and enthusiastic. Poll workers appeared to be well trained and diligent, but lacking support from above when materials were not delivered on time when the wrong materials were delivered. The most serious concern raised in the first day was that voters at almost every polling station had difficulty finding their names on the voters list and that a portion of voters may be disenfranchised.

Most of the irregularities observed seemed to stem from the logistical challenges of holding an election for the first time in 24 years. The Juba team observed clear that shortcomings on the logistical end and at the planning level. These weaknesses observed threat to disenfranchise a number of voters if not rectified in the remaining days of polling, but from preliminary observations and interviews were not deemed to deliberate or linked to fraud. The main problem was that some polling stations opened significantly late, or not at all, because the wrong voters lists were distributed. In a related problem, voters had trouble identifying their names on the voters lists for a number of reasons- voters lists were changed at the last minute so voters weren’t voting where they registered and when names were transcribed from Arabic to English the order of their names was changed. Though frustrated, voters seemed to accept these shortcomings because of low administrative expectations; While some voters were clearly disappointed, they still told us that they thought that overall the process would be free and fair.

Some more problematic situations were observed as the day wore on. For example, the Juba team observed an illiterate voter was aided by multiple party agents, poll workers, domestic observers, whose actions could be seen as intimidation/influencing her vote. She voted in plain site (not in a voting booth) and party agents intervened when she almost marked the wrong side. Video footage and photographs available. A polling station in the same center had not opened by 2pm when we left. The materials were delivered late (9:30) and when the poll workers finally put everything together, they realized they had the wrong voter list. They called the responsible authority within NEC, but still had not received a response by the time we left.