IN the 2018 general elections, around 1.67 million people’s votes were not counted towards the results of the elections. This is because these votes were ‘rejected’ by presiding officers, for one of several reasons.

So why does this happen, and how can you prevent it from happening to your vote, come election day?

According to the Elections Act, 2017, votes can be rejected in certain cases. Section 90 is the operative part of the law that deals with this issue, outlining scenarios in which ballot papers may be rejected.

Ballot papers that have no official mark or signature of the presiding officer or signatures of the assistant presiding officer are liable to be rejected.

Secondly, attaching any kind of object to the ballot paper, either intentionally or inadvertently, will also result in its rejection. The law also states that there should be no mark that can identify the voter, or anything — even a smudge — that makes it unclear who they intended to vote for.

When asked to explain why this is the case, former Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) official Kanwar Dilshad told Dawn that election officers manually tally votes, and in an effort to mitigate human error in their counting, only the mark of the familiar nine-segmented square stamp, provided to voters at polling booths, should be on the ballot paper, and that too within the area specified for each candidate.

If the bulk of the stamp does not appear in that area, or if it covers the electoral symbols of more than one candidate, the vote is liable to be rejected. “It is essential that most of the mark must fit on the ballot paper,” Mr Dilshad said.

ECP Spokesperson Syed Nadeem Haider told Dawn that there are different categories into which votes are divided after they are cast.

A valid vote would be one where the ballot paper is marked for a single candidate, and contains a signature and stamp from an assistant polling officer.

Another category of ‘Tendered Votes’ exists to cater to voters who find that when they arrive at the polling station, their name in the voter list has already been crossed out – implying that they have already voted.

However, Mr Haider explained that if such a situation arises, the voter will be given an opportunity to prove their identity, and then issued another ballot paper. “These will go into a separate box and will be counted independently.”

Another category is that of ‘Challenged Votes’, the spokesperson said, explaining that presiding officers may raise objections on the verification of individual voters, which would mean that while they would be able to cast their votes, these would also go into separate boxes.

Such votes would also be subjected to the same rigours as normal ballots, i.e. if there are no signatures or stamps from the officers on the back of the ballot papers, or if the voter has voted for more than one candidate, or if they have somehow revealed their personal identity on the ballot paper, the vote will be rejected and declared invalid.

After the time period of the election has concluded, the returning officer will consolidate rejected votes, and, if he notices any errors, he/she is bound to ensure that the vote is added to the tally for the respective candidate, for whom it was cast.

According to Mr Dilshad, “The ECP has utilised advertisements in the past, and will do so this time round as well, to educate voters on how to ensure they vote under the rules laid out within the election law.”

Published in Dawn, January 18th, 2024