OAS Complete 33 pages Final Report on Haiti Election

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 10 (Reuters) - A leaked report on Haiti's disputed Nov. 28 elections by Organization of American States experts recommends that a government-backed presidential candidate be eliminated from a second-round run-off, a U.S. media report said on Monday.

The Associated Press, which said it had obtained a copy of the OAS team's draft report, cited the document as challenging the preliminary election results released on Dec. 7 by Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), which had put government technocrat Jude Celestin in the second round.The Provisional Electoral Council said it had not yet received the final report by the OAS experts who have worked since late last month to verify the contested results from the chaotic presidential and legislative polls.

At a news conference with Haitian journalists late on Monday, outgoing President Rene Preval also indicated that he had not seen the report. "I have nothing to say about the (OAS) recommendations because I have not read them," Preval said. "I don't have them in my hands."

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ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES

EXPERT VERIFICATION MISSION

PRESIDENT ELECTION – FIRST ROUND 2010

FINAL REPORT

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Invited by the Government of Haiti on December 13, 2010, the OAS Expert Verification of the Tabulation Mission was requested to assess the practices and procedures used in tabulating the preliminary results of the November 28, 2010 presidential elections as well as other factors that had an impact on these results. On Election Day, international and national observers witnessed a number of problems: disorganization, irregularities as well as instances of ballot stuffing, intimidation of voters and vandalism of polling stations. These problems were further exacerbated by the precipitous decision of many candidates to call for the cancellation of elections, hours before the polls closed. In the days following Election Day, the OAS-CARICOM Joint Election Observation Mission received numerous allegations of ballot-box stuffing and alterations to the official result sheets (“Procès-Verbaux”) of the individual polling stations. By any measure, these were problematic elections.

In the Tabulation Center, where the Expert Mission focused its efforts, these problems manifested themselves in two particular ways. Some 1,045 Procès-Verbaux (PVs), 9.3 percent of the total from the 11,181 polling stations, never arrived and were identified as “missing.” Secondly, although electoral participation ebbed to 22.8 percent, 216 PVs recorded participation rates of 75 percent and above and 118 PVs reached or exceeded 100 percent.

The critical question facing the Expert Mission was, did the irregularities of November 28 impact the outcome of the presidential elections? After a thorough statistical analysis, explained in more detail in the body of this report, the Expert Mission has determined that it cannot support the preliminary results of the presidential elections released on December 7, 2010. The Expert Mission offers three concrete recommendations for the immediate term that would mitigate some of the anomalies caused by the more egregious irregularities and instances of fraud and ensure that the preliminary results better reflect the will of the people.

Procedure dictates that upon receipt of the PVs, staff in the Tabulation Center reviews the results through its plastic, transparent cover. If there are no visible signs of alterations, these results are immediately input separately by two data-entry operators. Initially, the Tabulation Center visually reviewed those PVs in which a single candidate obtained 225 or more votes. Subsequently, the Tabulation Center lowered that threshold to 150. (CONTINUED BELOW)

Full Report is 33 pages long and cannot be included in the blog. So Click on the link below to see FULL REPORT on RockMasters.com

http://rockmasters.com/flyers-2011/oas-report-draft.htm 

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