Operation Ping‐Pong to Beat Votes Fiddlers1
| Published date | 01 January 1961 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1961.tb01256.x |
| Date | 01 January 1961 |
| Author | Marion Foon |
Operation
Ping-Pong
to
Beat
Votes
Fiddlers
I
by
MARION
FOON,
Editor,
The
Vanguard,
Bathurst,
Gambia
IF
NECESSIfY
is the mother of invention, experience is certainly in
our
case the
father of ingenuity,
and
several decades of democratic elections in the Colony
have given
birth
to a fine bouncing offspring which deserves to be
adopted
wherever dependent territories
are
emerging into nationhood.
Tell-tale
wads
Expressly designed to prevent ballot-box fiddling, with practises
brought
to
light by previous elections in mind, this device makes it obligatory for
an
elector
to cast a vote once he has presented his voter's card,
but
makes it impossible
for
him
to cast more
than
one. Last general election votes were openly offered
to be sold for £Ior more behind
the
market,
and
ballot boxes were found to be
stuffed with tell-tale wads of ballot papers.
Though
the
ballot itself is completely
and
constitutionally secret, in
that
nobody
can
possibly tell for which candidate avoter has cast, a simple
but
foolproof mechanism gives a significant
ping
to indicate to listening officers,
clerks
and
election agents
that
one vote
and
one vote only has been registered.
The
procedure keeps to established form.
The
voter hands in his voting card,
which in Bathurst bears the photograph as well as
the
name, address
and
constituency of
the
voter to avoid impersonation, to the presiding officer.
The
voter's
name
is
then
crossed
off
the
list of
the
voters for
that
constituency,
but
in
place of a ballot
paper,
he is
handed
acoloured token, a small ball
about
the
size of a marble.
This
is taken behind ascreen where
the
ballot boxes, all
identically coloured, bearing the name,
photograph
and
symbol of the various
candidates,
are
ranged side by side, and, in privacy,
the
voter inserts
the
token
into the box of the chosen candidate.
As
the
ball falls it
cannot
miss striking a bell sealed inside the box before
falling on to a sound-deadening
bed
of sawdust.
Votes
for
sale
One
of
the
main
abuses
of
the
electoral system in past years has been
that
of
using
the
privacy of
the
polling
booth
either to hide
the
voting
paper
and,
instead
of
casting it for a candidate, carrying it outside for sale to the highest
bidder, or for candidates'
henchmen
or women to
cram
batches of illegally
purchased votes into
the
box of their
man
when
they cast their own vote.
Though
the
presiding
and
returning officers knew full well
what
went
on,
they were powerless to violate the secrecy of
the
polling booth.
The
ping-pong
ballot box gives to them, as well as to candidates' own clerks
and
agents, the
assurance
that
voting is clean, clear
and
correct.
The
king-pin of all this is
the
ballot box itself.
Invented
by
the
Attorney-
General for
the
Gambia, it has been skilfully constructed by members
of
the
Public Works
Department
at
negligible cost.
1Published with acknowledgement to The Vanguard, Vol.
III,
No.
19.
35
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