National
EC hopes invalid votes will remain under 5pc
The Election Commission (EC) has said invalid votes in House of Representatives (HoR) and Provincial Assembly (PA) elections is likely to stay under 5 percent.The Election Commission (EC) has said invalid votes in House of Representatives (HoR) and Provincial Assembly (PA) elections is likely to stay under 5 percent.
There were fears that the invalid vote percentage could shoot up following last-minute changes in voter education materials and delayed voter education programmes.
On October 25, the Supreme Court had ordered the EC to print separate ballot papers for the HoR and PA elections under first-past-the-post (FPTP) system. The EC earlier was planning to use a single sheet ballot paper for both the elections under the FPTP system.
The court order had forced the EC to change almost all voter education materials and defer voter education programmes.
“Percentage of invalid votes has been 2-3 percent in most of the districts,” said Navaraj Dhakal, spokesperson for the EC. “I can say that the percentage of invalid votes won’t cross five percent under the FPTP category.” He, however, said the EC “at this point of time is unable to say the exact percentage of invalid votes, as counting is still underway in some constituencies”.
Election observers, however, said that invalid votes might be higher in the elections under the proportional representation (PR) category, because of large ballot papers used for the system. A single sheet ballot was used for HoR and PA elections under the PR category.
14,286 votes invalid in Kavre
KAVRE: Number of invalid votes was high in Kavre district in the elections of federal parliament and provincial assembly held on December 7.
The District Election Office (DEO) said 14,286 votes in the district were invalid. As per the data available at the DEO, 4,200 ballots were invalid of the 45,025 votes cast for the federal parliament in constituency No 1. The invalid votes were 4,099 of the 48,553 votes in Kavre-2. Likewise, 1,266 and 1,800 votes were invalid in province ‘A’ and ‘B’ of Kavre-1. The figures of invalid votes were 1,321 and 5,488 in province ‘A’ and ‘B’ in Kavre-2. The DEO said double stamping and use of thumbprint to stamp the ballot papers were common voting errors made by Kavre voters. (PR)