21 Oct 2014

A total of 692 Batswana residing outside the country cast their votes on Saturday, October 18.

One thousand one hundred and forty eight (1148) had registered for the general elections in 21 countries. 

The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) secretary, Mr Gabriel Seeletso said this during the submission of ballot papers and election material from outside the country in Gaborone on October 19.  The voting, Mr Seeletso said, was limited to countries where Botswana has diplomatic missions. 

He said considering the spread of Batswana across the globe, the IEC decided that other places that fell under the jurisdiction of some embassies should be treated as extension of such offices and be allowed to vote.

“The motive of doing that was to ensure that Batswana exercise their constitutional right to vote for a government they want as the law permits,” he said. Mr Seeletso said distribution of ballot material was collated as a booklet guided by the number of people registered from each polling station.

He said the distribution of ballot papers and their numbers also depended on the constituencies where people registered, as they could not dispatch all the 57 constituencies’ ballot papers even where there were no voters for such.

Mr Seeletso said for the purposes of accounting, ballot papers were recorded on ballot paper account or Form U provided for in the law to reflect by a serial number and a constituency of each ballot paper. Ballot paper booklets varied in size depending on the registered number of people, he added.

Meanwhile, the chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Justice Abednico Tafa said section 67 subsection 5 provides that where voting takes place in Botswana, the presiding officer of each polling station, soon after the closing of the poll shall in the presence of any candidates or their polling agents, open the ballot box containing the sealed envelopes of the polling station, placing all the sealed envelopes containing the votes together with the ballot envelope account. ENDS