{"id":1240,"date":"2012-06-28T04:04:31","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T11:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/?p=1240"},"modified":"2013-06-13T12:08:31","modified_gmt":"2013-06-13T19:08:31","slug":"brief-election-observation-break-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/2012\/brief-election-observation-break-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Brief Election Observation Break Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve been traveling Ulaanbaatar and the surrounding countryside for twelve hours now and have returned for a quick break before we set off to a neighbourhood polling station to observe the closing of the polls and, if possible, the opening of the &#8220;traveling ballot box&#8221; that made the rounds to collect votes from the infirm yesterday, and then, again if possible, the final reporting of the count. We&#8217;ve been in 10 polling stations so far in very different neighbourhouds from downtown Ulaanbaatar to a ger district, to Nalaikh, a small coal-mining town 45 min outside of Ulaanbaatar, to Erdene Sum, a further 40km out in the country.<\/p>\n<p>Very quick observations so far, bearing in mind that we only see a slice of the proceedings and surroundings as observers:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the local election commissions have been going very strictly by the book<\/li>\n<li>unlike previous elections that I observed, my election monitor badge was checked and recorded several times<\/li>\n<li>when a voter needed a new ballot or something similar occurred, officials loudly announced this as well as the ensuing procedure.<\/li>\n<li>all proceedings are not only video-taped but that video feed is broadcast in the hallways of the polling station as well as on some roadsign screens<\/li>\n<li>party election observers were present everywhere and we also saw some domestic observers<\/li>\n<li>the registration system by fingerprint seemed to be very reliable. It was rare that officials would have to enter the number of identification papers to find a record. We saw the chip card very rarely, perhaps from 1 out of 20 voters<\/li>\n<li>we interviewed some voters near polling stations and they did not report anything untoward<\/li>\n<li>&#8211; the electronic voting machines also seemed to work well, though the two-sided Ulaanbaataar ballot (city election on one side, national election on the other) meant that a voter&#8217;s choices were quite visible depending on the positioning of the machine. Also, most voters expected some sort of feedback message after inserting their ballot (&#8220;Ballot Accepted!&#8221; or something of that sort) and were a bit puzzled by the lack of a &#8220;response&#8221;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Very quick first observations of the Mongolian election. <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/2012\/brief-election-observation-break-update\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6444,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4291,307907],"tags":[983090],"class_list":["post-1240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections","category-ikh-khural-2012","tag-julian-dierkes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6444"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1240"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2457,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions\/2457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}