GIFF JOHNSON
The number of postal absentee ballots that made it back to RMI in time to be counted were fewer than 40 percent of the number mailed to Marshallese overseas — demonstrating the problems inherent in this voting system.
On top of only 40 percent arriving — 1,469 ballots of 3,752 mailed out — more were rejected once Electoral staff opened the postal ballot boxes starting Monday afternoon at the ICC tabulation headquarters and began vetting them to ensure they met all the requirements.
Ultimately, the anticipated major impact from the nearly 40,000 voters living in the US and elsewhere fizzled in the face of postal logistics, late mailing of ballots by the Electoral Office and inability of overseas Marshallese to meet the multitude of postal requirements.
RMI election law provides that no postal ballots can be accepted on or after the 14th day after the vote, which meant Sunday December 3 at midnight was the end of the nearly two-week period for accepting incoming postal ballots. The ballot boxes with all of the postal ballots received by Sunday night were turned over by the RMI postal staff Monday morning to Electoral authorities and a police escort for transport to the ICC tabulation HQ.
Post Office Deputy Postmaster Bobby Zed confirmed that 1,703 ballots were received by the PO through Sunday night. But this total included 234 electoral ballot envelopes that were returned for a variety of reasons including incorrect address. This meant that the actual number of postal ballots included in these boxes was 1,469.
Once electoral staff opened the boxes and began vetting the incoming ballots, hundreds more were rejected for not meeting rules governing postal ballots. The most common reason appeared to be they were not mailed prior to November 20, or some other problem with the date on the outside envelope. If voters sent more than one ballot in an envelop, the envelop and the ballots inside were automatically disqualified. For example, one of the boxes contained 397 total postal ballots. Of these, 225 were rejected, leaving just 172 ballots from that box too tabulate. Box five saw 47 rejected out of 290 — Smaller numbers were rejected in all of the other boxes.
The net result is that barely over 1,000 postal ballots were accepted for counting for the 2023 national election. It appeared that not a single Nitijela race outcome was impacted by the postal votes.
Meantime, postal ballots continued to arrive after Sunday’s deadline. PO staff reported that on Monday night’s flight, 170 ballot envelopes arrived. More are expected to arrive this week but are “dead on arrival” having missed the deadline.
—Reporting by Hilary Hosia.