FC Planning Chair Shares Lebanon Election Experience

By John Lawrence

Editors Note: Many Falls Church residents know John Lawrence as Chair of the City Planning Commission and member of the library’s Board of Trustees.  His day job, however, is  running Congressional Affairs for the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES),  a 23 year-old non-profit organization that helps other countries with the technical aspects of elections, such as writing election laws, training election commissioners and training poll workers.

The Falls Church Times asked Lawrence to share information about his recent election observer trip to Lebanon, and he has provided us with the journal entries that follow.   The information below is based on Lawrence’s personal observations and views, not IFES opinion or policy.

Election Day — June 7: Here’s a quick description of the two main actors in this election drama:  March 14 is the group of parties/individuals who rallied around Saad Hariri, son of the assassinated former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.  This coalition was seen as the friendliest to the United States.  The March 8^th group had Hezbollah as its largest single component, I believe.  Hezbollah is a group that is on the U.S. terrorist list and is a very heavily-armed Shia militia, located throughout the country, but predominantly in the south.  It was Hezbollah that kidnapped the Israeli soldiers in 2006, which was the proximate cause of the August 2006 war.  Going into this election, no one knew who would win, everyone expected any win to be just by a seat or two.  The result was quite a surprise.

We started out at mid-morning in a city that was very quiet, with almost no cars on the main roads. I was with Nikolai, an IFES elections expert from Sofia, Bulgaria, and Aya, one of our IFES Beirut office staff.  First stop?  Aya’s polling station at a school in Beirut 3.

Normally traffic is heavy in Beirut, but it was extremely light this morning.  Once we got off the main road we could tell why the traffic had been light — all the the cars had gone to this polling station. For quite a while, we moved about 15 feet every minute or two.  Finally, Aya got “creative” in parking and positioned the car at the steps leading down to a store. She said good morning to the storekeeper, who returned her greeting, and we walked away. (In the Middle East there’s no predatory towing, just predatory parking.)  We headed to the school, passing her uncle who had been sitting in his car for an hour waiting to get closer.

There was a mob scene both inside and outside the polling station.  Most of the polling stations are set up for either men or women, and the women at this station  basically formed a mob inside the gate.  As in all stations, the women ignored the instructions from the Internal Security Forces.

Our “Special Visitor” badges got us immediate access, which meant that we had to push our way up the stairs to the polling station. Each station was a small classroom with generally two official poll workers at a desk processing people and another 6-8 party observers.

One note about security.  Every polling station had a man – usually police, but sometimes Army – standing at the door,  armed with a loaded rifle.  I’ve been around the Middle East a lot and am used to seeing weapons everywhere, but having an armed man inside the room was still a shock.  I can’t imagine that at the American Legion over on Oak Street where I vote.  Ironically, although the security forces make it possible for people to vote in safety, by law, no one in the security forces can vote.

The Voting Process – Ballot Papers and Purple Ink

Each voter presented his or her card and then their name was called out. After that, they were given an envelope and directed to the voting booth. Outside the polling center at a distance of 75 meters were the party activists who gave out “ballot papers.” These consisted of pieces of paper with the pre-printed names of their  candidates. The ballot papers were very small — some were quite a bit smaller than a business card — so that the names could not be changed because there was no room to make any additions. You could, of course, write out your own ballot in the booth from the list of names posted inside, but given the time it took most people to vote, almost no one wrote in the names.  They ALL used ballot papers.  This is a huge concern to people because in certain circumstances it easily compromises the secrecy of the vote.

After voters came out, they put their ballot envelopes in the transparent ballot box, signed their names and had their left thumbs (only the left) inked up to the first knuckle with indelible purple ink.

The differences between the polling centers we visited were minimal except when you compared the men’s vs. women’s centers.  The women’s centers were disasters in terms of organization.  Huge, largely uncontrolled crowds forced their way into old schools, flowed up stairwells filled with people, including many small children, and came to a dead stop in each hallway.  In one school, after fighting our way up the stairs we looked down a hall that was perhaps 100 yards long and 3 yards wide.  It was completely packed — side-to-side and end-to-end — with women waiting to vote.  No one was moving and there was no space for anyone to move.

He Looked Like He Was Holding On For His Life

The first classroom was about 4 feet inside the hall and I held my Special Visitor badge over my head and the guard in the room yelled for people to make room for us to get in, which we finally did.  I felt sorry for him.  He had one hand on the door jam and his other hand on the door, and he looked like he was holding on for his life.  As we stood inside and watched the process, I also watched him, and it was clear that this was going to be the longest day of his life.  I’m not being sexist, just reporting what I saw repeatedly.  Heavily armed security forces would tell women what to do,  and the women would ignore them.

At the men’s polling centers, you saw the same crowds, but you did not have the extreme level of disorganization, nor did you have the ear-splitting noise level.  The security forces tried their best, and succeeded in keeping the centers safe, but keeping them organized was another matter.  More than few observers said that they felt the women’s polling centers would have been better if there were female security personnel there because the women voters would have listened to them more than men.

As we went from center to center, we saw largely the same thing — massive crowds, good security, lack of control, and people who became increasingly frustrated as the day progressed.  At one school we were repeatedly confronted by women who claimed to have been waiting since 8:00 a.m. and who were still unable to vote.  It was well past noon at this time.  I have no way of verifying it, but given the crowds and the number of times we heard the same complaint, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this were true.

One polling station stood out because we heard very loud yelling, and one man came running down the hall telling us that two candidates were fighting and we needed to see what was going on.  So we went.

Heated Argument

In a small classroom (maybe 20′x15′) there were likely 30 people with a third of them armed security forces.  One man was stationed in front of the ballot box almost like he was claiming ownership of it.  This was a March 8^th candidate who had been fighting someone from March 14.  At one point the argument got so heated that the security forces took the extraordinary step of closing the door to the station to try to bring about calm.

We could never get a straight answer as to what happened, but it appeared that one of the candidates had been in the room for quite some time and another was objecting to that because although candidates are allowed to visit polling stations they are not supposed to stay except for a few minutes.  After several minutes of yelling we decided to leave since we’d seen, heard and photographed enough.  On the way out, another March 14 candidate was on his way in with a camera in tow to lend support to his colleague.  After a long, hard morning, we were told in the afternoon that the polling stations were largely empty,  so I was very glad we went to observe when we did.

Counting the Votes

In the evening, we wanted to see the counting and chose to go to the polling center where Saad Hariri, head of the March 14^th coalition, voted.  The counting process started with verifying that the ballot box was still sealed, then cutting it open in full view of everyone.  The ballots were then taken out and counted while still sealed.  At each step the party representatives had to agree that the process was being done right, and that they agreed with the count.  Each ballot was then opened and placed under a camera that projected the ballot onto a television screen so all in the room could see it, an interesting technique that is not new to Lebanon.  Each name on the ballot was read out and then recorded by the polling station official as well as the party representatives.  If there were any questions or disagreements, they had to be resolved before continuing.  After that was all done, the results would be transported to a central location for more counting, but I can’t say that I know that process.

What we saw in just three separate rooms on that floor, however, could not have been more different.  In one room, there was almost a frat house atmosphere with joking and laughing with one party representative talking on his cell phone, which was against the rules.  They were doing their job, but they clearly did not feel the need to move quickly.  In the next room, it was very subdued and professional, with one irregularity that we reported to the main domestic observer group so that they could correct it for the future.  In the third room, it was a bit less organized with people who were clearly new to the process (in terms of party reps) who kept having the polling officials go back and recount the ballots because their numbers did not match.  We only stayed about 20 minutes in each room, but it was clear that they would all go at least until midnight to finish their work.

As we went back to the IFES office, which is near Hariri’s house/headquarters, an optimistic March 14 coalition was soon setting off fireworks.   The next day, I think, even they were surprised to have won such a definitive majority.   Of the Lebanese parliament’s 128 seats, March 14 won 68 and March 8, 57.  Three independent members may also align with the March 14 coalition, which would give them a total of 71, a pick up of one seat over the previous distribution.

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Post Script: Lebanon’s elections were an anomaly not only in the fact that they occurred in a Middle East country or that they were regarded as well done and representing the will of the people.  They also had a fairly sexy campaign at times.  For those who have visited Lebanon this will not be a surprise, but compared to most of the Middle East, it was a bit risqué.

Variations on the 1958 French movie Sois Belle et Tais-Toi – “Be Beautiful and Shut Up” – were a recurring theme.

For more information, see http://mideast.blogs.time.com/2009/06/03/lebanons-sexy-election-campaigns/