DANVILLE Walker, director of the Electoral Office of Jamaica – the agency that runs the country’s elections – vowed yesterday to protect the secrecy of the ballot and the confidentiality of the electoral process in the August 27 polls.

Walker even solicited assistance from the media to help ensure that election day activities in the 6,232 polling stations islandwide are conducted above board.

“I want you to be on the lookout. you have cameras. The goal of protecting our confidentiality in elections can’t rest alone with us; it must rest with everyone and therefore in cases where you see this I would love your assistance in highlighting that,” Walker said.

The director of elections, who was speaking at a press conference organised by the Electoral Office of Jamaica to issue election day guidelines for the media at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston, also made it clear that no form of ‘voter intimidation’ nor bogus voting would be tolerated on election day.

“We have had a history of intimidation. It has happened in the past with regularity where the candidates used their indoor agents to pass the information out so they would know who on the voters’ list has not come in and then they go out in the constituency to ‘get out the vote’. We have to stop this intimidation in our polling stations,” the director of elections said.

“First of all, people have no right to know who has voted and who has not voted; it is against the law. I want the media to be on the lookout for this happening,” he added.

The electoral system, Walker told reporters, was not “built for the convenience of candidates or politicians though some think so”.

He said that agents of the political parties had used various guises to pass information outside the polling station, but said yesterday that every effort would be made to stop this from happening.

“It is illegal and it is a practice that must be stopped and we are moving to stop it,” he added.

The director of elections said, too, that the ‘random swopping’ of indoor agents for outdoor agents would not be condoned.

“.If you are replaced by the outdoor agent you will not be coming back and the EOJ is not going to pay you as the indoor agent because you are no longer the indoor agent for the candidate,” the director of elections said.

In the meantime, Walker said while there have been a number of reports of supposedly politically triggered ‘skirmishes’ he believed that this election could be ‘violence-free’.

“In many constituencies we have, we don’t have any problems with violence; the ones we have violence in always seem to overshadow the many constituencies in which there is nothing happening. I would just urge you to highlight some of that, so that our elections are not classified as violent,” the EOJ boss told reporters.

Walker also reiterated yesterday that electors would not be allowed to use cellphones or cameras inside polling stations, saying that these items could be used by persons wanting to sell their votes to take pictures of ballots.

Walker said while electors would not be frisked or searched on entry to polling stations, the EOJ would be tracking situations in instances where there were ‘suspicious’ activities.

“.If somebody is taking pictures of their ballot it is clear there is a motive and if we see where there are more instances of that than the margin of victory I would believe it is a case for the Constituted Authority to void the election,” Walker said.

Members of the authority are invested with powers to halt an election in any constituency, or to request the Election Court to void an election and hold a fresh one if there are malpractices.

A candidate has 14 days to bring a matter to the authority where they feel they have been robbed. Once the case is supported it will be taken to the Election Court which sits for six months. The system was successfully utilised in the 1997 elections to settle discrepancies surrounding the contest for the West Central St Andrew constituency.

Walker said, however, that the EOJ’s number one goal was to have all polling stations open at 7:00 am, and he said results should be in by 8:00 pm – three hours after the close of voting.

Nomination Day for the August 27 general elections is August 7, while police, military and election day workers will vote on August 21.