Manipulation: Ballot Boxes with Holes On Bottom Have Been Detected, These Will Be Used For Illegal Ballot Stuffing
Verdict – Manipulation
On June 19, news started spreading that some ballot boxes have holes on the bottom which will be “used for stuffing them.“
This information is manipulative: there are holes on the bottoms of all the ballot boxes in Armenia, and such boxes have been in use for years.
The Holes Have a Special Purpose
The senior election specialist of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), Aghasi Yesayan, mentioned in an interview with Media.am and Factcheck.ge that the holes on the bottom of the ballot boxes are not new; such boxes have been used for more than 10 years.
According to Yesayan, the holes have several purposes: “When stored, these boxes are put on top of each other. It is very difficult to separate them if boxes are stacked hermetically. To be able to easily separate them, holes have been drilled into the ballot boxes,” Yesayan said.
He also added that in the past, the state would often not receive ballot boxes back. Especially in the villages, where people often used to keep the ballot boxes and put them to everyday use. That too, was one of the reasons for producing the ballot boxes with the holes on the bottom.
The Ballots Are Counted
The ballot is put in an envelope and stamped. It has a rectangular shape. On top of the ballot box, right on the cover, there is a hole designed to match the ballot shape, which makes it easier for the citizens to throw their ballots into the box. Therefore, it is not clear why would the ballot stuffing be done from the holes on the bottoms of the boxes if there is an easier way.
Photo by Media.am
The coordinator of the Independent Observer Initiative, Vardine Grigoryan, stated in an interview with Media.am and Factcheck.ge that the process of forgery is not as simple as stuffing the ballot boxes through the holes. “They would have to falsify everything in 3-4 different stages. They need to pass the document through a special machine, scan a fingerprint, print the check, the individual would then need to put a signature to the voter list, receive the ballot, vote, stamp the envelope, and only then throw their ballot into the box.”
According to Grigoryan, multiple places keep records of the quantity of the ballots. Falsifying ballots, she says, is by far, not as simple as it may seem: “The ballot is logged into the machine and first validated according to the number of the printed checks, then according to the number of the signatures on the voter list, and finally – the number of the stamps. If they [the violators] get away with so many steps, then they can definitely throw the ballots from the top and don’t need the holes on the bottom of the boxes.”
In conclusion, there have been holes on the bottoms of the ballot boxes for years. These holes are not meant for the ballot stuffing, because committing such an election violation requires a multiple-levelled falsification of the ballot, and if the violators were able to successfully pass through all the stages of forgery, they wouldn’t need to use the holes on the bottom of the boxes instead of a more comfortable one on the top.
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This article was produced in partnership with Media Initiatives Center and is part of Facebook’s Fact-checking Programme. Given the rating, Facebook may impose different restrictions – click here for full information. For information on issuing a correction or to dispute a rating, please see here.
