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Vote Counting Underway in Democratic Republic of Congo

November 29, 2011

Scott Stearns | Kinshasa

Vote counting is underway in the Democratic Republic of Congo even as some people are still casting their ballots. Monday's vote was marred by violence, allegations of fraud, and the late delivery of election material.

After a long night of vote counting, poll workers in Kinshasa's Kasa-Vubu neighborhood taped up a thick plastic bag of used and unused ballots to ship to electoral commission headquarters. The final vote total for each polling station is sealed in a separate black envelope taped to the front of the bag.

Poll worker Robert Ngongo drew from a stack of black plastic envelopes, writing the names and numbers of each polling station in blue marker.

Ngongo said when the voters left, electoral officials stayed behind to begin the second phase of the process, which was to count votes through the night in the presence of representatives of political parties. Now they are forwarding those results to the electoral commission.

Polling center station chief Augustin Angangi Essika checked the official tally sheet showing combined presidential results.

Essika said each total is written as both a numeral and in words spelling out the total in an effort to help prevent fraud.

While most of the polling stations here in the capital opened and closed more or less on time, balloting in some areas was disrupted by voters fighting poll workers who they accused of fraud. Presidential candidate Vital Kamerhe said he has evidence that ballots were marked for President Joseph Kabila in advance, an allegation the electoral commission says is not true.

In the southern city of Lubumbashi, some polling stations failed to open Monday because ballots were never delivered. And gunmen staged separate attacks on a convoy carrying election materials and on a polling station in the city's Bel-Air neighborhood.

The electoral commission said polling places that ran out of ballots and polling places where no materials were delivered would continue the voting process Tuesday. Reports from Lubumbashi say most of those polling stations did open Tuesday and would stay open for the full 11 hours of balloting before submitting their vote totals along with the rest of Congo.

The electoral commission is promising final results before incumbent president Kabila's current mandate expires December 6.