By Julian Dierkes
During the five days leading up to the election we had driven through Tov, Arkhangai and Khuvsgul, visiting polling stations and campaign offices along the way. We have reflected on the election preparations we saw during these visits elsewhere.
For election day, our intrepid observation team split into city and countryside pairs, reflecting that we had a single car available and were looking for a mix of polling stations around Erdenet. Marissa and Benjamin have already offered their observations of voting in Erdenet.
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Buyantogtokh D and I focused on the countryside surrounding Erdenet, in Orkhon and Bulgan aimags, all part of constituency 4.
In the course of the day, we visited seven polling stations, reflecting some of the considerable distances between rural polling stations. We observed the opening of a polling station on the outskirts of Erdenet, then two polling stations in Bulgan’s rural Bugat soum, one in Bulgan city, another in Bulgan’s Orkhon soum, one back on the outskirts of Erdenet, and observed the closing, transmission of results and the beginning of the manual count in Jargalant soum of Orkhon province.
Opening
The opening at polling stations has been a rather formal, but also celebratory event at polling stations I’ve observed over the past six elections. Elements of this are that voters begin to line up some time before opening. Most of these early voters were elderly reflecting their schedules, but also some of the event-focus of voting. Such elderly voters are often wearing their sunday-finest clothes, usually a deel, more often than not adorned with medals that have been awarded to them.
The head of the polling station reminded staff of procedures and the importance of their role. Then the election commission and voters who were at the head of the line joined in singing the national anthem, all turning to the flag that is inevitably displayed somewhere near the ballot box. In the station we observed on the outskirts of Erdenet there was a crowd of around 15 people already lined up when we arrived around 6:40h. After the formalities had been concluded, voting proceeded immediately and without any delays.
Just over a month ago, I observed the parliamentary #election in #Mongolia.
Polling stations generally open with the signing of the national anthem making for a ceremonial and serious atmosphere as voting starts.
#MGLpoli— Mongolia Focus (@mongoliafocus.bsky.social) Jul 31, 2024 at 11:09 AM
Voting Process
The voting process in rural stations generally works the same as it does elsewhere and as my colleagues have described. My observations confirm what they found regarding the time it took voters to complete the different steps of registration, receipt of the ballot, marking of the ballot, submission of the ballot, marking of their finger with indelible ink.
I also recorded similar times that this process required for voters. Voters took from 3-10 minutes in the polling booth given the number of choices they had to mark.
Daytime Voting
Because the total number of eligible voters in rural polling stations is so much smaller, the only lines I observed anywhere formed right at opening. There had been some fear ahead of the election that the longer time that voting itself would take would lead to long wait times in polling station, but I did not observe such lines.
At two neighbouring polling stations in Bugat soum, electricity was lost mid-day. When the outage became apparent, the generators were started up quickly and plugs re-plugged to prevent the vote counting machine from shutting down. While these outages thus demanded a response by the election commission and lead to some noise, they did not disrupt voting for voters at all.
Spoiled Ballots
The most common challenge to voters that we observed was that they did not choose enough candidates on the district election ballot as a full vote was required for a vote to be valid. If a voter had selected fewer than the required choices, the ballot box would return the ballot with an error. Voters were then given another opportunity to add the number of votes required for a full slate. While we saw several voters in the course of the day who did return to the polling booth to complete their ballots, we only observed a single voter who failed to correct the voting on their second attempt and thus lost their opportunity to submit a ballot. We also did not observe instances of too many votes requiring a new vote.
When ballots were spoiled, for example by more than one selection of a party on the proportional representation vote, voters were able to receive a replacement ballot and the spoiled ballot was marked by having its corner cut off. We later saw these spoiled ballots also account for during the manual count.
Election Observers
As had been my experience in previous elections, party observers were present in all stations that we visited. In rural stations this inevitably means observers from the DP and the MPP with little presence of other party observers. We saw one observer from Ikh Nam, one from CWGP, and one from KhUN in the course of the day. We did not encounter domestic civil society observers or other international observers.
Polling Station Atmosphere
As I recalled from previous elections, the atmosphere in polling stations can vary quite a bit, largely due to the personalities of the election commission, I would guess. This is no comment on the integrity of the election at all, but a reflection on the dedication that many members of the election commissions bring to their task.
Some polling stations were not only friendly in the design of the spaces to be used by voters (often including carpets placed at the centre, sometimes even with flower pots/plants to frame the ballot box, the ubiquitous offer of candy), but also in the extent to which voters were actively welcomed into the polling stations and how I interacted with staff as an observer. We were very careful to immediately ask for and approach the head of the election commission to introduce ourselves and offer an opportunity for information from our observer IDs to be recorded. To some our presence seemed liked a welcome distraction in a long day of work. In those instances, it was easy to engage staff in conversations about particular aspects of preparation for and conduct of the election. Other polling stations were much more bureaucratic in their appearance and atmosphere. Inevitably, they were also the polling stations where our somewhat sudden appearance looked to lead to nervousness and some reluctance in discussing the proceedings. Often these reactions were mirrored by other members of the election commission and the party observers.
Some of these atmospherics also carried over into relations among the commission members and the party observers. During periods of slack when no voters were coming through the polling station, some stations were alive with chatter among locals who knew each other and to some extent at least enjoyed collaborating on the running of an election. Other polling stations were very quiet when there were no voters.
Neighbours, Party Observers and Small Communities
Obviously, the voting process is designed to afford voters as much privacy as possible in filling out the ballot and depositing it in the ballot box to ensure secret voting. There are pragmatic limits to the extent that secrecy can be preserved in small communities. This is obvious and in no way a criticism of the organization of Mongolian elections and the local or the national level, but struck me more during this observation than in previous elections.
In rural parts of Mongolia, polling stations will often have fewer than 800 or even 600 voters assigned to them. That is in part dictated by a desire to offer every eligible voter an opportunity to vote within some reasonable distance, so that polling stations have to be spaced in such a way to offer that proximity to voters.
The small number of voters in small communities implies that voters will know each other, election officials will know most voters, and local party activists will have a very good sense of who may be voting for their party. In such small communities, the competition really is one primarily between the MPP and the DP, though other and smaller parties as well as independents obviously also do receive some votes.
The fact that neighbours will see each other in the polling station does not imply anything about the secrecy of the voting in and of itself, it just means that there is a layer of social relations among voters, but also between voters, officials, and party observers, that may not be governed by election laws entirely.
In such smaller polling stations, party observers often keep tallies not only of the number of voters, but also of names of voters. At one such station, party observers just asked voters as they walked past the observers’ tables what their name was. Clearly, the voters are under no obligation to divulge their name to observers, but it would have flashed up on the screen at the registration station a little earlier in any case, and when the person asking is an elderly party official, almost all voters seem to comply, even though some do not seem to be too pleased with this interaction.
When we visited a soum party headquarter on election day, party activists there confirmed that they were keeping track of voters by name in order to be able to call on voters, whom they thought of as supporters, in the course of the day if they had not voted yet.
Voters, especially elderly voters, often turn to election officials whom they know for help. We already mentioned some of the aides and tools available to voters, but even with these in place, the process of inserting ballots into the ballot box or the marking of the ballots themselves remains confusing to some voters. It is not surprising at all that they ask for help from neighbours whom they know who happen to serve on the election committee. In many ways, we would want all voters to be able to turn to familiar faces for help if that makes them more likely to vote. Yet, some of these interactions also hold potential for abuse, without there being much that can be done about that. Party observers may be perceived to be intimidating or “checking on” voters. Officials may nudge voters toward particular votes if asked for support. While we did not witness anything that looked like undue interference, that potential certainly exists.
Closing
Due to fears around the length of the process, there was also some concern that voters might not be able to enter polling stations before closing at 22h if they were waiting outside at that time. This was neither the case at voting stations throughout the day, nor at closing. The polling station that we observed in Jargalant soum was clustered with two other polling stations and there were no lines and thus no voters excluded at closing time.
In the station that I observed, the election Stab stuck very closely to instruction manuals that they had received and prepared for. Steps included the closing of doors, then the closing of registration and all the steps required for the shut-down of the ballot box as well as electronic communication of results.
I was somewhat surprised that the party observers collected the “receipt” documenting the voting at this polling station but then left as soon as the manual count started. Surprised because the whole rationale for conducting a manual count to confirm the electronic counting across all polling station was to dispel notions that there might be manipulations leading to disparities between these counts. Yet, party observers that were presented for the closing of this polling station – including the only party observer from the Civil Will Green Party – were clearly not interested in the manual count, strongly suggesting that local party organizations at least did not doubt the electronic results.
Given the complexity of the two ballots and the multi-member voting, the manual count was a very laborious process, obviously. Here as well, the election commission was provided with and closely followed their manual. I had wondered ahead of time how counting might be conducted. For the party vote, this was obviously relatively straight-forward, i.e. ballots could be sorted into piles of votes for all the parties on the ballot, then grouped into packets of 25 for tallying.
For the direct member election this was more complicated, obviously. Here, the first sorting was for piles of ballots that had straight party slate votes. Again, these were bundled into packets of 25. All this sorting was done and checked separately by two people and recording in protocols along with a numbering of the ballots as they were sorted.
My own energy flagged by 2h in the morning, especially knowing that I had to drive back into the centre of Erdenet for the night and sharing in the general reluctance to drive at night in Mongolia.
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