Applicant seeking to overturn...
They further argue that Order 60 did not allow for new Declarations to be made by a Statutory Officer as does the RPA.
“Section 84 of the RPA is clear that the ROs are required to make their respective declarations. Further, section 96 mandates that the CEO is to consider these declarations in the preparation of his report under that section. Order 60 cannot bring about a new legal regime for the basis of the declaration of the votes,” they conclude.
They also extended their arguments to the actual conduct of the recount process noting that Order 60 cannot create a new legal regime which establishes criteria and standards for the determination of validity of votes which is inconsistent with the Representation of the People Act.
According to the submission Order 60 permitted a process to be used which established the validity of votes not only by persons not authorized to so do and after the validity of votes were already determined by the Returning Officers but on criteria and standards inconsistent with the Representation of the People Act.
This assertion and several other were adopted by Chief Election Officer Keith
Lowenfield.
In a submission made on the CEO’s behalf, Senior Counsel Neil Boston, Saevion David-Longe and Samuel Glasgow stated that the valid votes stated on the Certificates of Recount are not the same as determined by the Presiding Officers (PO) due to “various directions given during the Elections Commission’s supervised National Recount.”
These directions they argue were inconsistent with procedures set out in RPA and the manual for POs and polling day officials.
The Commission, they stressed, accepted ballots with smudges and erasures as long as the voter intention appeared to be clear and overall applied this “new rule” inconsistently based on the arguments and officials involved.
The submission includes an extensive appendix with actual ballot papers and a table showing the statistical impact of the Commission’s actions.
According to Lowenfield 572 ballots previously rejected were deemed valid while 319 which were considered valid on March 2 were rejected during the recount. The total ballots impacted was 891 less than 1% of the total ballots cast.