HTH -- Haiti Earthquake

November 30, 2010. Haiti's CEP director says election irregularities not significant enough to cancel election

SOURCE: Altegrity Risk International

Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) said on November 28th that irregularities in elections were small and not enough to cancel the results. The CEP's director general said that among the 1,500 electoral centers, only 56 had to be closed during the election day. He also said that the call for nullifying the election results by most of the presidential candidates was not an official demand and the CEP has not received any formal request. Officials say that two people were killed during the election process, 10,000 votes lost, and the election closed early in the afternoon amid denouncements of irregularities. The largest observer mission, a joint effort by the Organization of American States and the Caribbean Community, said that the election was marred because many people were blocked from voting by rampant disorganization. The mission also cited fraudulent repeat voting facilitated by poll workers and party agents. But after considering these problems, the mission concluded that it "does not believe that these irregularities, serious as they were, necessarily invalidated the process."

While 12 presidential candidates originally alleged "massive fraud" and called for the elections to be voided, two of the candidates retracted their allegations on November 30th, calling for all votes to be counted after it was reported that they would likely be in the runoff elections. A second leg of elections is currently scheduled for January 16th, 2011.

Protests were reported in Port-au-Prince, Gonaives, St. Marc, and Jacmel on November 30th. Rocks and bottles were thrown and police used tear gas to disperse crowds.