News

9180 Postal Ballots admitted to Count

November 16, 2018 9:09 am

The total number of Postal Ballots that the Fijian Elections Office [FEO] dispatched for the 2018 General Election was 11,227.

As at 6pm on 14th November, 2018, the FEO received a total of 10,272 Postal Ballots back.

Initially, the FEO had estimated, that a total of 16 Polling Stations will be required for all the Postal Ballots that will return based on projections from the 2014 experience.

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However, the 2018 Postal process has had better results in comparison to 2014 with the FEO having received a total of 10,272 Postal Ballot packages back.

In accordance with the law, the FEO carried out the postal package verification exercise from 07 November until 15 November 2018.

During this process the FEO matched the information of every applicant to the Postal return package and those that matched were admitted for count at the Count Centre.

Party agents and Observers were entitled to be present at the verification exercise.

The total number of approved Ballots for 2018 General Election for counting was 9,180.

In light of the rule of no more than 500 Ballots per Polling Station, the FEO calculated that a total of 19 Polling Stations are required under the Postal Venue and as such the initial figure of 2,170 Polling Stations is now increased by additional three to make it 2,173 Polling Stations to accommodate all the Postal Ballots that have been approved for count.

“Therefore the total number of Polling Stations for the 2018 General Election is 2173,” explained the Supervisor of Elections, Mohammed Saneem.