Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06PORTAUPRINCE249
2006-02-02 20:48:00
UNCLASSIFIED
Embassy Port Au Prince
Cable title:  

HAITI VOTE TABULATION CENTER

Tags:  PGOV PREL KDEM PKAO HA 
pdf how-to read a cable
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ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 022048Z FEB 06
FM AMEMBASSY PORT AU PRINCE
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 2269
INFO RUEHZH/HAITI COLLECTIVE
RUEHBR/AMEMBASSY BRASILIA 0938
RUEHWN/AMEMBASSY BRIDGETOWN 1473
RUEHKG/AMEMBASSY KINGSTON 1955
RUEHME/AMEMBASSY MEXICO 2420
RUEHBH/AMEMBASSY NASSAU 2653
RUEHSP/AMEMBASSY PORT OF SPAIN 1608
RUEHSA/AMEMBASSY PRETORIA 0779
RUEHDG/AMEMBASSY SANTO DOMINGO 0349
RUEHKO/AMEMBASSY TOKYO 0250
RUEHQU/AMCONSUL QUEBEC 0379
RUMIAAA/HQ USSOUTHCOM J2 MIAMI FL
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 0819
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 PORT AU PRINCE 000249 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

STATE FOR WHA/CAR
DRL
S/CRS
SOUTHCOM ALSO FOR POLAD
STATE PASS AID FOR LAC/CAR
INR/IAA (BEN-YEHUDA)
TREASURY FOR JEFFREY LEVINE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PREL KDEM PKAO HA
SUBJECT: HAITI VOTE TABULATION CENTER

REF: PAP 0217

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 PORT AU PRINCE 000249

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

STATE FOR WHA/CAR
DRL
S/CRS
SOUTHCOM ALSO FOR POLAD
STATE PASS AID FOR LAC/CAR
INR/IAA (BEN-YEHUDA)
TREASURY FOR JEFFREY LEVINE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PREL KDEM PKAO HA
SUBJECT: HAITI VOTE TABULATION CENTER

REF: PAP 0217


1. Summary: On January 27 and 29 PDAS Jonathan Farrar and
Charge Carney separately visited the Vote Tabulation Center
(VTC),which will be the nerve center of Haiti's election
results tabulation. The VTC is located roughly one km from
the MINUSTAH base at the Port-au-Prince airport. MINUSTAH
has fortified and protected the center with the Chinese
formed police unit (FPU),MINUSTAH patrols, and checkpoints.
Voting data from the tally sheets filled out in the provinces
will be entered into a central database with various controls
to prevent fraud and errors. Political parties, observers,
and the press will all be able to observe the tabulation
process from areas separated off from the main tabulation
floor. The CEP must still decide when it will first publish
and how often it will update results, but it will have
complete control of how and when results are released. End
Summary.

Overview of Tabulation Process
--------------


2. On 27 January PDAS Jonathan Farrar with S/CRS and DRL
staff visited the Vote Tabulation Center (VTC) in the SONAPI
industrial park near the Port-au-Prince airport. Charge
visited 29 January with Core Group Ambassadors. MINUSTAH and
CEP elections officials explained to the visitors that the
votes would be counted at the voting sites (BV),the ballots
would be stored at secure MINSUTAH departmental compounds,
and the tally sheets would be transferred to the MINUSTAH
base at the Port-au-Prince airport by helicopter and truck
(reftel). MINUSTAH will transfer results to the tabulation
center in order to keep the CEP operators working at maximum
capacity but slowly enough to avoid a backlog at the center.
The CEP has not yet decided when to begin releasing results,
but has proposed beginning result reporting when 20 percent
of the returns are counted. When the CEP is ready to release
results, the VTC will send results to the CEP press center at
the Montana hotel, which will officially release them to the
press. The VTC has the capacity to update results on the
Internet every 20 minutes, but the CEP has not decided how
frequently to release result updates.


Location Details
--------------


3. The VTC is in a warehouse inside the SONAPI industrial
park, a walled compound with limited access approximately one
km from the MINUSTAH base at the Port-au-Prince airport. The
VTC warehouse is adjacent to the Chinese FPU base and the
MINUSTAH electoral warehouse, where MINUSTAH stores
non-sensitive elections materials such as tables and chairs.
(Note: Contact WHA/CAR for aerial photograph of the facility.
End Note.) Some of the roughly 50 warehouse-style buildings
in the industrial park contain active textile manufacturing
plants, which MINUSTAH officials say they expect to be open
in the days following the elections.

Multifaceted Security Plan
--------------


4. MINUSTAH,s security plan for the VTC involves
fortification, static Chinese FPU units, MINUSTAH patrols,
military security for the entire delivery route from the
airport, and escorts for delivering the sensitive materials.
According to MINSUTAH elections officials, military engineers
will connect the VTC to the other two MINUSTAH compounds with
sandbags and barbed wire. The entire fortified facility will
be guarded by the Chinese FPU, which has been reassigned
exclusively to VTC security. Throughout the counting
process, UNPOL and military units will staff checkpoints and
patrol the grid of streets within the industrial park. In

PORT AU PR 00000249 002 OF 002


order to safely transport results from the MINUSTAH base at
the Port-au-Prince airport, MINUSTAH will transport results
to the VTC under military escort.

Detailed Tabulation Process
--------------


5. Once a batch of sealed results arrives at the VTC, CEP
workers open the sealed plastic bags and separate the tally
sheets from the poll worker attendance sheets. They file the
poll worker attendance sheets for processing after the
election and send the tally sheets to the reception area. To
log in each tally sheet, the workers must enter the tally
sheet number and the location of its voting site, creating a
file in the database, which is not connected to the Internet
and has multiple regularly-updated backups. Once the sheet
is entered into the system, it is passed to a second set of
operators who confirm that the sheet number and voting site
location are correct. After the login is complete, VTC
employees pass each tally sheet randomly to a computer
operator who inputs the data from the tally sheet. From
there, they pass the tally sheet randomly to a second
operator at a different computer who enters the results
again. The VTC then compares the two sets of results. If
they match, the tally sheet is filed and stored, but if the
results do not match, VTC workers pass the tally sheet back
to data entry. MINUSTAH, OAS, and CEP officials have been
training operators and practicing with the system and say the
center is ready for Election Day.

Political Parties, Observers, and the Press
--------------


6. The VTC has two areas for political parties, the press,
and the international community that are connected to the
vote counting area by controlled-access hallways to the rest
of the VTC. Both areas will have access to elections results
via computer.

Publication
--------------


7. The CEP has not yet decided how long it will wait until
publishing the results or how often it will update the
provisional results (pending contestation). However, it
appears that the CEP will first release results after 20
percent of the votes have been counted. The CEP will
announce provisional results from its USAID-funded press
center at the Montana Hotel in Port-au-Prince. After the CEP
announces results, the VTC will publish results on-line so
that political parties and observers can quickly see if the
results they observed at the voting sites match the
provisional results. According to MINUSTAH elections
officials, the CEP and VTC website will likely update results
every two hours.


8. Comment: Problems on Election Day are unlikely to
originate from the VTC itself; variations of this system have
been used successfully in other Latin American elections.
Security for the center should be robust. End Comment.
CARNEY