Day 7 Voting Day Sunday March 4

4:30 am depart to Instituto Nacional Albert Camus San Salvador

Opened at 5:12 am for the JRV’s and International Observers

Witnessed discrepancies such as :

-Stopped counting the ballots. They had to be total of 600

-did not have original team members at JRVs

-two JRVs had the same last name. They were talking about family members.

-forgot to remove corners from ballots

-did not check fingertips

-President was giving back DUI to voters without passing it to the secretary

-A vigilante was sitting behind the voting station eating lunch

– JRVs were able to detect voters from different municipalities and expired ID’s

10:00 am back to the hotel

12:00 pm lunch

4:00 pm visited voting station John F. Kennedy in Ilopango

The following discrepancies were witnessed :

-printed failure ballots

-voters taking a picture at their ballot with their phone

-people telling voters what to vote for, at the polling station.

5:00 pm polling site closes.

The morning JRVs appeared to be making human errors. The evening JRVs appeared distracted. Also, incomplete ballots were given as well as double printed ballots. Both sites were opened to the JRVs after 5:00 am and were open at about 7:30 am for the public.

JRVs started counting the ballots after the polling site closed at John F. Kennedy

The most troubling was when JRVs had to count cross votes. One JRV counted the cross votes but not the preferences on the final A1 sheet.

The second JRV counted all the preferences but not the cross votes. At the end, they addended the final A1 sheet.

The third JRV counted all the cross votes but not the preferences.

Two JRVs had an average of 250 total votes, with 51 nulled votes on one, and 39 nulled votes on the other. One JRV had a total of 54 votes with 9 nulled votes. My observations were that all three JRVs had a difficult time understanding the cross-vote concept, leaving into question wether the voters know the rules.

In addition, many nulled votes were intentionally nulled.

However, many other ballots were nulled because they crossed too many flags or faces. Our concerns was that most of the  JRV’s were extremely fatigued at the end of the day during the voting count. We observed the nulled results with writing all over the ballot, and as a result, the JRV would decide if part of the vote was valid for certain parties. If the ink was marked heavier in certain squares, those were marked preferentially. Our concern was significant, given the complex voting system,  the illiteracy of certain citizens, and the extreme inhumane fatigue. The accuracy of results were questionable given these circumstances as aforementioned.

11:30 pm left the polling site and arrived at the hotel at 12:00 am.