Page 84 - A READY RECKONER

Brief Profiles of Countries, EMBs and Partner Organisations of A-WEB

5. Voting age  The Collation center shall add up all the polling
18 station results in the constituency before hand-
ing it over to the Regional Electoral Officer
6. Opening and closing time of polling stations
Opening: 8 am
Closing: 5 pm (B) OTHER INFORMATION

7. Counting process **Voting by Glass Tokens
 Presiding officer reads out the Ballot Token Ac- The Gambia is conducting its elections through a unique
count and polling time
voting system introduced in the early 1960’s to address
 Polling/Counting agents cross-check seals the challenge of high levels of illiteracy in the country.
numbers with their notes before seals are bro-
ken by the Presiding officer This system is based on the use of tokens (clear-glass
marbles) to be cast in separate iron-made drums (that
 Presiding Officer breaks the seals, pours the to- serve as a ballot box) for each individual party/candi-
kens onto the sieve and filters them date. Each party/candidate competing in an election has
 Presiding Officer arranges the tokens on the a drum painted with its own identifying colors and their
counting tray party symbol or photograph.
 Presiding Officer shows the filled counting tray On election day, at the polling station, drums are placed
to polling/counting agents and/or Domestic/In- behind the polling booth. Voters, after being issued a mar-
ternational Observers present. ble, proceed to the polling booth to vote. When a marble
 Showing of the counting tray should be done is introduced in the drum of the selected party/candidate,
one after the other by falling, it hits a bell whose sound clearly indicates to
the audience in the polling station that a vote was cast.
 Presiding Officer records votes polled by each To prevent hearing other sounds, when sealing the drum,
candidate on the Counting form
polling officers place sand or sawdust into its bottom. It is
 Presiding Officer returns tokens in their respec- also interesting to highlight that, since the sound is like a
tive ballot drums bell, on election day bicycles are banned from the imme-
diate proximity of polling stations.
 Presiding Officer reseals the ballot drums sup-
ported by binding wires After the voting process has ended, votes are counted by
placing the marbles into special trays (with either 200 or
 Polling/Counting agents may escort the Assis-
tant Returning Officer and Presiding Officer to 500 holes), a simple system that allows counting officials
the collation centers at their own cost. to quickly ascertain the number of votes cast in each
drum.
 The Collation Center will then collate polling sta-
tion results

Information on elections # seats Term of # candidates / political parties #districts
office
Presidential Elections 1 5 9 1

National Assembly 58 5 9 53
Local government 5 9 53

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