Inside a polling station

Aside from being interested in the election results my main curiosity was in how a polling station is supposed to function – who does what in terms of the vote, election officials and election observers. So I spent a few hours of election day just watching what was going on, mainly from our office at the Boma which had been converted into a rather cramped (and hot) polling station for the day.

The essentials for a voter are that he/she must be 18 or over, had previously registered to vote and turns up to vote sometime between 0600 – 1800 hrs. An individual can only vote at the centre that he/she had originally registered to vote. They also have to bring along with them their National Registration Card (NRC) and Voter’s card to the relevant polling station. If they turned up with only one of these documents then they were not permitted to vote. Within each polling station there were seated a mixture of Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) officials (normally 5) wearing bright orange vests and election observers from the political parties and civil society organisations.

The voting process then went something like this:

1. A voter presents his/her NRC and Voter’s card to the first ECZ official who searches through a booklet to check that the voter is eligible to vote at this particular polling station. The booklet includes a mini copy of each Voter’s card registered to that polling station. The details on a Voter’s card include a photo, voter number, NRC number, date of birth and gender
2. The voter and NRC numbers are read out by the first ECZ official who ticks off the voter in his/her booklet. The election observers from the political parties and civil society organisations have copies of the same booklet and also check off each voter
3. As Zambians are voting for representatives in Presidential, Parliamentary and Council elections a voter next collects three forms for the candidates under each of these areas. There are 10 presidential candidates for a voter to choose from; only one candidate is female
4. Each polling station should have 3 cardboard cut out polling booths so a voter will proceed to one of these booths with their 3 pieces of paper to then cast their votes
5. The final stage is for a voter to neatly fold each piece of paper (ideally) and insert them into the appropriate sealed ballot boxes. The boxes are colour coded: orange for the Presidential boxes, red for MPs and black for Councillors. There is an ECZ official on hand with a ruler to ensure each paper is pushed deep inside the ballot boxes.