The proposal of the Elections Commissioner to hold the count at the polling booth itself is laudable and progressive. But several political parties have expressed reservations about it, the given main reason as the possibility of floods.

Even a politician should be aware that floods are not so selective as to spare the poll but wash out the count. The real objections to the proposal have to be found elsewhere.

1.   The most formidable problem appears to be security. In these days of imminent threats to security anywhere in the island it is axiomatic that points of vulnerability should be kept to the minimum. Three thousand odd counting stations in the night is a huge exposure.

2.   The on-going war has taxed the strength of our Police and the Armed Forces to the maximum. Spreading them out at this critical hour to guard a multiplicity of counting booths would be a grave danger to national security.

3.   The political parties themselves would be severely constrained to find agents to observe the count at such a large number of counting venues. The most taxed will be the small parties with limited resources.

4.   Contestants have their respective areas of power and influence. In these pockets they have an advantage over the others. The corrupt and aggressive among them may make use of their clout to tilt the count in their favour or sabotage it in defeat. One cannot forget the incident at the last NWP election that led to the annulling the vote, and the thuggery in the EP poll.

Nevertheless it would be retrogressive to reject the Commissioner’s initiative altogether. It is an idea that should be encouraged but it should be implemented pragmatically. It would be safer to confine the counting to a limited number of centers to begin with. As the system gets stabilized, the number can be increased progressively until each polling booth becomes a counting center.

Let us hope that that happy day would dawn during the term of office of the present Commissioner. It should not be a vain hope, for the Government would take a long time to exhaust its excuses for not appointing the ‘Independent Election Commission’ to be recommended by the politically structured Constitutional Council.

Earlier the Trincomalee electorate had been the last to announce its election results. This was mostly due to the arduous terrain that the ballot boxes had to traverse through. In 1970, Trinco’s results were the first to come. A time and motion study of the election process including the transport of ballot boxes over the ferries had been done and the counting procedure simplified. Similar measures may help to further expedite the release of results even before the counting system is fully broad based.