Mongolia Focus

By Benjamin Nuland and Marissa J. Smith

In the week leading up to election day on June 28, Julian and Benjamin observed 10 polling stations in constituency 4 (Khuvsgul, Bulgan, and Orkhon aimags), traveling from Murun to Bulgan to interview the election staff on their confidence toward the smoothness of the electoral process (our findings can be found on the preparations post here).

 

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On June 28th election day, Benjamin and Marissa stationed themselves in Erdenet City, Orkhon aimag, a major voting center for both constituency and nationwide elections. Throughout election day, we observed eight polling stations which administered voting for a total of around 8000 voters, also interviewing local voters and election staff in Mongolian and English. Almost all of the the polling stations in Erdenet were at local schools, including ones attended by former Mongolian President Ts. Elbegdorj and the current president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Here was how the election went down on election day:

Opening:

When we arrived at 7 AM, the election staff were already fully set up to begin the election process. Party observers from the MPP, DP, KhUN, and National Coalition also arrived early to take their seats in the first polling station we were at. Around 3 to 4 voters were lined up to cast their ballot, mostly elderly voters, party officials, or those super motivated to vote. There was also a local journalist at this polling station, though unfortunately he had left when we moved outside to go to our next stop and we were unable to learn more about his planned activities for the day. Here we also observed a local VIP (poll workers exclaiming about a “darga”) cast his vote between 7 and 8 AM (he announced loudly to the entire room that he didn’t know which side to have facing up when submitting the ballot to the machine; more on this issue below).

Voting Process:

At the beginning of voting at 7 AM, heads of polling stations conducted a 10-minute demonstration for both voters in line and party observers on the polling station processes, from voter registration to ballot submission.

Here was the demonstrated procedure: voters would arrive at the polling station with their IDs, and a finger scanning machine then validated the identity of a person and confirmed that they were at the right registered polling station. (A loud error sound would be heard if any voters were checking into the wrong station. We heard this a few times at larger school complexes that had three different polling stations at the same site, more on this below.) Voters would go to one of three or four desks depending on their registration number to exchange a receipt from the fingerprint-scanning station for a packet of two ballots (one for the constituency vote , the other for the party vote). After waiting in line, a voter would use a voting station to fill in the ballot. If a voter was struggling to fill it in, they could use the provided accessibility aids to help them (provided devices varied between polling stations). When done, voters would put their ballot in a prepared folder and line up at the voting machine to cast their vote. To insert the ballot, the voter would put the constituency vote in first, then the party vote in second, both facing down (a point of confusion in the voting flow, as we note below). When a light on the machine turned green, the voter moved on to the finger marking station, confirming one had voted. Julian provided a photo example in our post about election preparations.

We’ve inserted a map of an example polling station below:

The time it took voters to go through the whole process was relatively short, ranging from 5-10 minutes, out of which only 1-3 minutes was typically dedicated to filling out the ballot itself. Lines mainly formed at registration or between obtaining the ballots and sitting at one of the voting stations. The lines leading up to the ballot machines often moved pretty quickly because the machines were relatively efficient, accepting ballots in 40 seconds or less. However, at approximately 1:30 in the afternoon, when lines were long, we observed one voter wait almost 10 minutes between getting their ballot and sitting down in a voting station to mark their ballot.

One of the concerns we began to notice was the orientation of the voting machines; since the machines often faced the voters, we thought that a voter’s choices could potentially be seen by those in line to the voting stations.

Midday Mechanics 1: Long Lines

The lines really began to form at about 9 AM, as middle aged voters, some with young children, began showing up to form lines of 10 people. We noticed that after the voters collected their ballots, many were rigorously scanning the candidate names on the constituency vote, suggesting that perhaps many voters did not come in having made their decisions. When we spoke to her outside the polling station exit after she had voted, a young voter mentioned how she had three specific candidates they wanted to vote for, but picked the five others randomly based on her favorite party. She and other voters also talked about how they had done research on most of their candidates, making judgements based on candidate education, qualifications, and party affiliation. A young voter even showed us Songolt, an app that showed mock ballots of all the candidates and parties from all constituencies, making lists of all candidates more accessible to voters. But nevertheless, a large number of 87 candidates campaigning in total meant that it was hard for voters to have extensive knowledge of them beyond their qualifications and party affiliations. In the middle of the day when lines were long in Erdenet and voters were being admitted into the room one by one, a polling station head expressed to us that the size of the mandate was a concern in terms of keeping voters moving through the polling station, with voters having to take the time to select eight candidates.

Longer lines were observed during the middle of the day, late afternoon, and early evening. The lines reached a maximum capacity of 30-40 people at around 12:30 pm, prolonging voting processes from ten minutes to an hour. Yet despite this, the long lines did not seem to bother voters much, as all voters we observed stayed in line to cast their ballots. We began to notice that there was a presence of police and in a few cases soldiers on site, with every polling station employing about one to three police or military officers. These had various approaches and degrees of involvement in the electoral process; some were more laissez faire in only being a backup in case of an immediate security issue, others played a more active role in voter crowd control, letting in one voter into the polling station at a time to prevent overcrowding. One of the latter also checked our observer badges himself when we entered. A great concern that we had and observed among others was that there were at times 2-3 polling stations at the same school complex, making it challenging to locate the correct path to a particular polling station, meaning that at times people waited 30-40 minutes in line just for the finger scanning machine to tell them they were not in the right polling station and they would have to go to another line and start the process again (i.e. they were at the right school but not at the right part of the school). Even though this would create some frustration with voters, it evidently wasn’t channeled into a reason not to vote. We did not observe a single voter leave a line. By the end of the day, we noticed that poll workers had put up signage to help direct voters to the correct polling stations, and earlier in the day, voters were helping one another (and us!) to find particular polling stations.

Midday Mechanics 2: Party Observers

Overall, party observers were obviously very dedicated to their duties, and were generally open and welcoming to foreign observers. While some parties had alternating observers based on shifts, other party observers stayed for the whole day (7am to 4am). In Erdenet, observers represented a range of parties; in addition to MPP, DP, and KhUN, the National Coalition and Shine also had observers at poll stations. At one station in Erdenet, it was noted that the MPP had four observers; for the most part however there was only one observer per party.

Throughout election day, we noticed that party observers were taking timestamps of voter data, specifically the percentage of those registered who voted. That data was most likely collected to watch out for suspicious voting patterns, as a concern was that many voters, called or pressured by party members, would turn up in the masses at the last minute to vote. In some stations, party observers took on a more proactive role to gather data, taking photos of both voter identification and voter data on GEC-provided monitors. While this seemed like a standard practice, keeping record of voter information could suggest that some party observers had an expectation that certain people would show up to vote for their party, and if not, they could directly make a call requesting people to vote.

While Julian noted that the countryside in Bulgan and Orkhon aimags had party observers from the DP and MPP, there was more party observer representation in Erdenet, including KhUN and National coalition. But beyond noticing the diversity of party observers in Erdenet, we also noticed some people claiming to be “independent” observers, not seeming to be members of the press. One of the “independent” observers we saw was rather close with the observer for the MPP, taking selfies with the MPP representative and engaging in heavy conversation. While we could speculate about the impact of nonpartisan independent observers, it would be the case that with “extra” observers, parties would have more extensive data on voters who casted their ballot, and would have more resources to make phone calls to voters who had yet to come to the polling stations, pushing more people to potentially vote for their party.

Midday Mechanics 3: Election Management

All of those in charge of the polling stations were extremely professional throughout election day, but they had various reactions to our presence. Some heads actively approached us to give a general presentation about their polling station, update us on the proportion of registered voters that had cast their vote, and answer a few specific questions we had, while others seemed drained with the long day and left us on our own. Despite incoming thunderstorms in the midday and early afternoon, election management did not seem too concerned with voter turnout. One head of a polling station in Erdenet told us when asked about clouds and thunder that had just rolled in that voters would be “safe inside polling stations [from the thunder and lightning].” When we asked them about projected traffic at the polling stations after important shift-change times during the day (the Erdenet mine and mineral processing complex operates twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, including on election day), heads of polling stations said little; one indicated that it might be an issue (“magadgui”).

Despite the smoothness of the election process overall, election management for some polling stations were not observed to enforce the GEC’s “no-phone policy.” Phone baskets were observed at some voting stations and “no-phone” posters were posted around election rooms, but voters did not put their phones in the basket nor always put their phones away when in line. The policy was intended to prevent bribed voters from giving proof of their vote to a briber, but it is hard to say whether that was the case in the polling stations we saw.

A significant speed bump in the voting process observed throughout the day in Erdenet was that voters were unsure which side of their ballot should face up when being fed into the voting machine. We observed that poll workers were alert to this issue, however, and poll workers were quick to instruct voters who were getting stuck. At at least one polling station a worker was even observed to be focusing complete attention on watching this step and coming to the immediate aid of any voter getting tripped up.

Closing

Closing at 10 PM was fairly smooth, taking around an hour and a half to shut down machines and properly put away voter registration paperwork. The staff allowed party observers to collect election data in three ways: 1. by allowing observers to take photos of the flatscreen monitor showcasing all voter demographic data before shutting the screen off, 2. by distributing to party observers a voter data receipt printed from the registration station, and finally 3. by collecting party observers’’’ small USB flash drives and uploading voter demographic data into them. At the close of polling observed in Erdenet, the number of party observers was greater than the number observed earlier in the day, and by the time of the manual count, only one had left.

To stop the ballot machine from accepting more ballots, the staff took out the machine from the white box holding the physical ballots, ripped off the plastic seals in the front of the machine, and then proceeded to print multiple copies of receipts that contained preliminary election results. The receipts included the tally of votes each candidate won as well as the number of votes accumulated per party. One receipt was given per represented organization (party observer, independent observer, or foreign observer entity), and election staff required all observers to give a signature to confirm receipt of these election results. Election staff took photos of our signatures and sent them to the aimag election commissions. Upon receiving election results, party observers immediately contacted aimag election commissions, notifying them of the results.

Manual Vote Count

Before the manual count began, the head of the polling stations conducted another demonstration in front of the election observers on how the manual count would work. Two locations in the room were designated for four tables each, one for the constituency vote, and the other for the party vote; all the ballots within the “white box” were poured onto the table and divided by ballot type. For the table holding the party votes, piles were sorted by party selected. Two election staff, both women, hand-counted every ballot in each pile three times, before using a pen to label every ballot with a number to confirm their count. The constituency votes on the other hand were separated into three piles: the “party line” vote (those voted for all the candidates within a party), the “clumps” vote (those voted for groups of candidates from selected parties), and the “all over the place” vote (those who voted for candidates across various parties). Three women were situated at the table, the ballot sorter, the reader of ballot results, and the recorder. The recorder was given a grid with all the candidates, and, by listening to the reader recite the votes, tallied them up one by one.

Conclusions

Overall, the election process went very smoothly. Voters didn’t share concerns over long lines or bad weather, party observers showed up and were dedicated to their duties, and the election staff was professional and perseverant. All these concerns were relaxed because of a strong democratic framework put in place, with extensive protocols and an experienced staff guiding the electoral process. But nevertheless there were still a few concerns that arose: 1. Difficult voter choice with large mandates, 2. confusion over correct polling station locations within polling station complexes, 3. unenforced “no phone policy,”” and 4. the presence of “independent” party observers.

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