Elections Office Clarifies Claims by SODELPA
The FEO has put in place its own administrative boundaries to ensure fair distribution of polling venues and polling stations to its Divisional Managers on Election Day
The Fijian Elections Office would like to clarify a statement by SODELPA in today’s Fiji Sun (FS 15/09) “Concerns about Supervisor of Elections Bias and Mistakes in 2018 Voter Rolls.”
To imply that voters have been moved from Tailevu and Ra provinces to Kadavu is incorrect. Voters are sitting in their correct venues. The Voter Lists generated on August 1, reflected the Electoral Division which is Eastern. The FEO has put in place its own administrative boundaries to ensure fair distribution of polling venues and polling stations to its Divisional Managers on Election Day. This is to ensure that the logistics workload of distributing and collecting election materials to and from polling stations together with the monitoring of Election Day activities is equally shared by the Divisional Managers and their teams.
This is to guarantee that all our distribution and collection timelines are met and carried out efficiently. The demarcation of these boundaries or what we refer to as “Electoral Areas” is quite different from the normal Administrative Areas followed by the Divisional Commissioners which is Province based, and known to the public.
The FEO Electoral Areas are demarcated based on the distribution of polling venues and polling stations for logistics purpose on Election Day and not by Province. This is reflected on the Voter List cover.
The Divisional Manager for Eastern Division looks after 33 Election Day polling venues (nine in Kadavu and twenty four in Levuka) which falls within the normal Administrative Area of the Eastern Division. However, on Election Day he also looks after 77 polling venues from the Western Division (Tavua and Rakiraki) and 110 polling venues from the Central Division (Korovou and Nausori). Although 187 polling venues are physically sitting in the Western and Central Divisions, logistically they are managed by the Eastern Division team. It would have been better for SODELPA and its Leader to seek clarification from the FEO first so that they could understand the
The FEO has put in place its own administrative boundaries to ensure fair distribution of polling venues and polling stations to its Divisional Managers on Election Day. This is to ensure that the logistics workload of distributing and collecting election materials to and from polling stations together with the monitoring of Election Day activities is equally shared by the Divisional Managers and their teams. This is to guarantee that all our distribution and collection timelines are met and carried out efficiently.