***Continued from the main post.... Suggested Amendments and possible additional sub-sections to the Section-64:
The Section-64 is the only section which tried to guide the electoral officers on the procedures for the Collation of Results after the voting process had been completed.
Thus, there is need to introduce more detailed sub-sections which would throw more lights on the proper procedures for the collation of the election results.
Therefore, in addition to all the existing sub-sections; Section-64 should have further sub-sections as suggested below:
a). A Collation Officer or Returning Officer shall have a technological “Collation Device” which provides the collation officer with all the appropriate collated results which were made available from the various appropriate collation systems.
(b) The collated results that shall be available on the collation device include the computer-collated results received from the Collation System for the directly transmitted polling unit results, as well as the manually collated results that were transmitted to the secondary collation system by only the direct down-line collation officers where applicable.
c). The Collation Device of the first-level collation officers (Ward Collation Officers) do not need to have the manually collated results that were transmitted by any direct down-line collation officers, since there are no other down-line collation officers below them - except the presiding officers at the polling units.
d). The collation device of a collation officer or returning officer shall contain only the necessarily applicable transmitted polling units results, or the necessarily applicable computer-collated results as well as the transmitted collated results from the direct down-line collation officers under him or her.
**(This means that a Collation Officer or Returning Officer shall not see the results of any other collation center, or the results of any other polling units which are not under his or her coverage of collation.)
The commission (INEC) shall ensure that all the electoral devices at all levels are configured properly in order to perform accordingly as stated in the Electoral-Act.
e). For the first-level collation officers (Ward-Level collation officers), if there are polling units that are not yet available on the Collation Device, they shall wait until after the expiration of the maximum delay time allowed for polling unit transmission, before they can go ahead to collate and announce their results with only the available polling units on the collation device, provided that the automatically generated number of accredited voters in the polling unit coincided with the keyed-in number of accredited voters, and the keyed-in results coincided with the photos of the results uploaded to the photos-server.
The first-level collation officers shall not collate the results of those polling units that are not available on the collation device, -- not minding the fact that the hard-copies of such Polling-unit results are available, **(and also without minding the fact that the uploaded photos of such missing Polling-unit results on the collation device are already available on the publicly viewable photos-server).
f). For higher-level collation officers and the returning officers, if the collated results of any (or some) of the direct down-line collation officers are not yet available on the collation device, the affected down-line collation officer(s) shall provide the hard-copy as well as the soft-copy of their collated results, and also an attestation and a proof that the collated results which they presented were the same as the one they already transmitted from the COLLATION CENTER, but were delayed due to poor network or other unforeseen circumstances.
Nevertheless, the computer-collated results of the polling-units which are available on the collation officer’s collation device must be used to verify and confirm the collation figures presented by such down-line collation officers.
g). The results on the Collation Device, as well as the process of keying-in of the collated results by the collation officer shall ALL be DISPLAYED and made clearly visible at the Collation Center where the accredited polling agents and media personnel shall see it.
h). At the end of the maximum allowable waiting time for transmission of the Polling-unit results, the commission shall issue an instant notice to all the Collation Officers, and at the same time, suspend all further polling-units results from being transmitted to the collation system, -- until after the final results had been declared, and all possible reviews completed, then the remaining suspended polling-unit results can be transmitted to the collation system..
**Nevertheless, the uploading of the photos of the polling unit results to the publicly viewable photos-server, which is meant for the uploading of photos of results-sheets, shall not be suspended.
i). At the end of the collation at every collation center, the collation officer shall key-in the collated Results, total accredited voters, total voided votes, and the total votes into the transmission software of the collation device, and transmit same to the appropriate collation system meant for the transmission and collation of the already Collated Results.
j). A CLEAR PICTURE of the duly completed Collated Results shall be taken with the collation device by the Collation officer, and transmitted to the publicly viewable photos-server which is meant specifically for the uploading of pictures of results sheets.
The picture will also serve for verification purposes.
k). The penalties for outright NON-TRANSMISSION of the collated results from the collation center by the collation officer before proceeding to the venue of the next level of collation should be specified in the Act.
Collation Officers shall be mandated by the Act to transmit their collated results from their various collation centers and upload the picture of the collated result sheet to the photos-server before leaving their venue of collation to deliver the hard copies of their collated results to the higher-level collation officer at the higher-level collation center.
l). The temporary stoppage of the transmission of POLLING UNIT RESULTS by the Commission after the expiration of the maximum delay-time SHALL NOT affect the transmission of the Collated Results by the Collation Officers from their Collation Centers.
m). At the end of the collation by the final returning officer, he or she shall announce the initially collated results without declaring or returning a winner; after which a review period of 72-hours maximum shall be allowed for the returning officer, at the end of which a winner can be declared and returned.
n). During the review period, all the possible disputes to the computer-collated results as well as all the omitted polling unit results that were not transmitted within the initial window-period for the transmission of polling unit results, shall be fully reviewed and added accordingly and be re-tallied again properly by the returning officer, provided that he or she is satisfied that the uploaded photos of the results-sheets of such omitted polling units are available on the appropriate server meant for the uploading of photos of the polling units results, and that they are consistent with the hard-copies that were presented for review; and that these polling units results are also verified and confirmed by all the polling agents present, else such omitted polling unit results should not be included by the Returning Officer.
o). If all possible disputes, including the disputes to the collated results by the down-line collation officers were all treated and settled before the maximum allowed review time of 72-hours, the returning officer may declare the final collated results and return a winner without having to wait for 72-hours.
p). At the end of the review period, if there are still persisting unresolved disputes, the returning officer shall declare the final results as at the end of the 72-hours, and return a winner, putting into consideration the disputes that were already resolved within the review period.
q). The collation as well as the reviewing of the collated results by the Returning officer shall ALL be DISPLAYED, and be made clearly visible at the Final Collation Center where the accredited polling agents and the accredited media personnel shall be seeing the display screen clearly.
r). A returning officer shall key-in the Final Collated Result into his or her collation device and transmit same to the appropriate collation system after the declaration of the final results.
He or she shall also take A CLEAR PICTURE of the Final Collated Result and transmit appropriately to the photos-server.
s). A returning officer who declares the final result of an election before the elapse of the 72-hours whereas there are still persisting unresolved disputes, had breached the Act.
There should be penalties for such erring Returning Officer.
t). Immediately the final results are declared, and the winner announced, the commission shall publish all the results in all the Collation Systems on their website where they are available to be made available to the public within 48 hours.
These results include:
a). the collated accreditation data from the accreditation collation system which were automatically generated and transmitted by the voting device while the voting was going on.
b). the direct polling-units computer-collated results from the primary collation system which were the results sent by the presiding officers at the various polling-units - including all those delayed polling-units results which were later transmitted after the final results had been declared (all those delayed polling-units results which were later transmitted must be indicated in the published results, so as to aid independent forensic auditors).
c). the secondary collated results from the secondary collation system which were transmitted by the various collation officers at the different levels of collation which also include the final results-collation sheet which was transmitted by the final returning officer.
d). the final numbers of the remaining ballot papers and booklets from the collation system for the collation of the numbers of the remaining electoral materials which were transmitted by both the presiding officers at the polling-units as well as the various logistics officers at the various levels of collection points of these materials.
Any person or party who wants to have the certified true copies of these results, whether in part or in whole, shall apply accordingly to the Chief National Electoral Commissioner or any other appropriate officer of the commission – as the case may be.
u). Electoral devices used in an election shall not be tampered with, or recycled for use in any other election if the election in which it was used for is still undergoing review by the
commission.
v). Polling unit results and the collated results that are transmitted to the collation systems as well as the photos of the same results that are uploaded to the photos-server for the benefit of the viewing public shall be deemed as the exact representations of the same original results that were transmitted and/or uploaded by the appropriate electoral officers, unless contested at the Tribunal or court of competent jurisdiction with the certified true copies of the duplicate copies of the results that were given to the police, or the originals of the duplicate copies of the results that were given to the party agents, and found to be manipulated.
w). The reproduced certified true copies of the transmitted results, both the results that were transmitted directly from the polling units and those that were transmitted from the various collation centers, which were used by the commission to collate and announce results during the election, as well as the reproduced certified true copies of the photos of the results which were uploaded to the photos-server, and which were certified and released by the commission as the true copies, shall ALL be deemed as the exact representations of the same original results that were transmitted and/or uploaded by the appropriate electoral officers, unless contested at the Tribunal or court of competent jurisdiction with the certified true copies of the duplicate copies of the results that were given to the POLICE, or the ORIGINALS of the duplicate copies of the results that were given to the party agents, and found to be manipulated.
x). The Act should indicate a timeline after the election within which the commission must release a detailed demographic report of the persons who participated in the election and also publish it on the commission’s website. The report shall contain the number of those voters who came out to vote, whose voter-information were successfully found on the electronic register, but were not successfully authenticated for voting.
The report shall also contain some categorizations according to gender, age-ranges, occupations and so on. This report shall also be broken down from state to state. Same report shall be forwarded to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) for data updating.
The suggested timeline for this report is 14-days after the final results were announced.
y). The Act should mandate the commission to conduct a compulsory in-depth forensic inspection of all the deployed electoral technologies which were used in the election, and publish the forensic reports on their website within a certain timeline after the election. These technologies include the voting devices, collation devices, all the various collation systems, and including the photos-servers.
The suggested timeline for the publishing of this forensic report is 14-days after the final results were announced.
** (Important Notes):
The Act should explain some of these terms in Section-152..
Such terms as:
“Transmission”,
“Collation System”,
“Server”,
“Collation Device”,
“Computer-Collated Results”,
etc. Source: BOOK TITLE:
“SOME SUGGESTED AMENDMENTS TO THE NIGERIAN ELECTORAL ACT 2022.”
((Pages: 28-32; And from Pages: 33-46))https://drive.usercontent.google.com/u/0/uc?id=1GAp0cegDplx-E9FgXRXcI5uDX6tgW-cw&export=download |
