Two additional election officers to be assigned to each polling station

April 18, 2005

The National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) has announced its decision to raise the number of election officers and polling stations to five by assigning two more officers to each of the polling stations.

“ The decision was meant to ease the work burden during polling day of the existing three election officer and also to accommodate as many voters as possible in the short period of time,” says Kemale Bedri, Chairman of NEBE.

According to Kemal, the two additional officers will carry out the smearing of the voter–marking ink and issuance of ballot papers to voters, while the existing three will be engaged in verifying the identity of voters and giving briefings.

The idea of increasing the number of polling stations election officers has been unanimously supported by the political parties’ joint forum, he added .

In a related development, office of the Board has decided to establish 736 more polling stations by dividing those polling stations where more than 3,000 people have been registered.

“ This will help the smooth conduct of the voting process by alleviating the crowd in some polling stations” says Tesfaye Mengesha, Deputy Head of the Board Secretariat. “ The Secretariat has ordered election coordinators in each constituency to recruit officer for the additional polling station and give them training.”

Currently, there are 28, 811 polling stations thoughtout the country excluding the Somali State.