KATHMANDU, Dec 6: The Election Commission (EC) has claimed that final results of the parliamentary and provincial assembly elections under the first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system will come within four days of the start of the vote count. Likewise, the final results of the election under the proportional representation (PR) system will come within eight days, election commissioners said.
EC Commissioner Ishwari Prasad Paudyal said they have made arrangements to counting the votes quickly. "The counting of votes of the 32 districts where the elections were held in the first phase will begin at 5 pm Thursday," said commissioner Paudyal.
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Ballots used in the first round of elections are stored in district headquarters. Representatives of the political parties and security personnel have been guarding the ballots.
The election body said the votes of the parliamentary elections will be counted first. EC believes that vote counting this time will be quicker as the ballot papers are smaller compared to the ballot papers used for the local elections. "On an average, a five-member vote counting team will count at least 3,000 ballots in its one seven-hour shift," said commissioner Paudyal adding, "If things go as planned then we can announce the results of smaller districts within 10 hours."
Vote-counting process in the recent local elections was so slow that certain local units had to wait for two weeks for the final results.
Also, concerned over the security of ballot papers, the commission has ordered the local authorities to place metal nets around the vote-counting space to prevent representatives of political parties from touching or destroying the ballot papers under any pretext. Also, security officials will be placed between the vote counters and the representatives of political parties.
The EC is conducting second round of elections in 45 districts of the country on Thursday. Poll preparations, according to the election officials, have been completed in all districts.
Officers deployed to polling centers have started to distribute voter ID cards to new voters.
