Vote Tallies Blank in Battambang City Booths
The National Election Committee (NEC) on Wednesday publicly released official election documents from eight polling stations in Battambang City, revealing that forms essential to calculating results had been left blank at two booths on polling day. The Constitutional Council of Cambodia (CCC), which has ordered the release of sealed documents from Kratie and Battambang provinces, on Wednesday instructed the NEC to open “safety package A” from 12 polling stations in Siem Reap province in order to compare raw data with figures that gave the CPP a victory in preliminary election results. That data though, represented on form 1102 as a total number of votes for each political party, was conspicuously absent from two of the eight packages from Battambang City. “[It’s] a technical error. The Constitutional Council will have this heard before [a court of] law,” Uth Chhorn, spokesman for the Constitutional Council, said. Koul Panha, director of the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia, said that the blank forms raised serious questions, and condemned the Council for failing to release the total number of spoiled votes Wednesday.
Khuon Narim and Matt Blomberg
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/elections/vote-tallies-blank-in-battambang-city-booths-41257/
