Richard Kohn *, NicaNotes, December 2nd 2021
https://www.afgj.org/nicanotes-12-02-2021
Voting Center in Bilwi, North Caribbean Autonomous Region
CNN and other mainstream media have been promoting a conspiracy theory without evidence that the Nicaraguan national election was rigged. However CNN and other corporate media did not send anyone to cover the election. I was one of the 170 international witnesses and 67 international reporters who witnessed the Nicaraguan election first hand. We found the election to be very fair and extremely secure. After watching the elections and vote tallying closely, I am completely confident in the election results. Most Nicaraguans voted in support of the incumbent Sandinista government.
There is no evidence supporting the conspiracy theories propagated by the mainstream media. Claims were made that there was low voter turnout and non-votes were converted to votes for the Sandinistas. However, the rate of voting we observed was consistent with the high voter turnout reported by officials: about 65% of voters voted, similar to 2011 and 2016. Furthermore, as I will explain in this article, the ballot boxes, voter sign-in, and vote counting are under constant scrutiny by members of multiple political parties throughout the process. There are many safeguards against tampering. International observers like myself found the conspiracy theories of fraud unfeasible.
Let me review a few of the security procedures that were used. First, they do not have absentee voting or early voting. It is certainly an inconvenience, especially for the handicapped, but they do have elections on a Sunday which is declared a national holiday. Students are given time off to get back to their homes for voting. The Voting Center staff provided assistance to handicapped voters. The reason they only allow direct voting on paper ballots is to ensure security of the process. There is no vote harvesting or mailing in of ballots. And it doesn’t leave questions about whether certain votes were valid.
National political parties do not have to collect hundreds of thousands of signatures to be on the ballot. They only have to have their own board of directors and elected boards of directors in 80% of 153 municipalities. One of 16 parties was disqualified because the leader was a US citizen. One party with a representative in the National Assembly decided not to run. That left 14 political parties which combined into alliances to back 6 candidates for President and 7 sets of candidates for the National Assembly. The last three parties to have won the presidency were all on the ballot.
Election Ballot in the North Caribbean Autonomous Region.
Any Nicaraguan at least 16 years of age can vote. They are automatically registered when they receive their national picture ID (like a social security card but with a photograph). There is no issue of people having their voter registrations purged. Starting last July, all voters had the opportunity to check their registration with the system and confirm their voting place, and most people (2.8 million) opted to do so.
The polls opened at 7:00 AM and lines had already formed. First, the voter’s ID was looked up in a computerized database (offline and backed up on paper), and then the voter was sent to the appropriate room of a school to vote (polling place). Here, there were short lines of a few minutes. There were 3 poll workers from 3 different parties: a president, first and second member. The president looked up the person’s voter ID on a list of names with photos, and directed each voter to sign in. Another poll worker stamped the ballot and signed it (so that it couldn’t easily be substituted), and the president explained the ballot and how to mark it. At least three official poll watchers from at least 3 political parties at a time stood behind the poll workers as observers. The voters moved to a private space to mark the ballot behind a barrier, and placed it in the ballot box. There is no way anyone could have known who they voted for. Then the second member applied indelible ink to the voter’s thumb to prevent them from voting again, although they already had several checks against duplicate voting. I took photographs of every step of the process. I think it is safe to say the odds of anyone voting more than once were highly improbable.
The poll workers and the party poll watchers count the votes at the end of the day making sure each used ballot is accounted for and equal to the number of people who signed in to vote. They also make sure the total number of ballots received at the beginning of the day equals the number of used ballots, unused ballots and null ballots. After counting the votes, the poll workers and poll watchers sign the minutes (summary of results) which are called in, posted outside of the voting center, and hand delivered by the poll workers and watchers with the secured ballots to the municipal office for verification. This process is repeated in each of 13,459 polling stations across the country.
Voter signs in to vote in Nicaragua while four different poll watchers
(political party representatives, standing) observe the process until votes are counted
If there were a conspiracy to alter the outcome of the count, it would have to involve people from all participating political parties in the room counting the votes, it would only affect the few hundred votes counted in that room, and it could still be caught upstream. If ballots were added or subtracted, they wouldn’t have the right stamps and signatures and the count totals compared to sign-ins would be wrong. To substantially change the outcome of the election would require a conspiracy of hundreds of thousands of poll workers and poll watchers from different political parties in the polling stations across the country without any of them disclosing the secret. The conspiracy theories reported in the mainstream press are impossible.
The very reliable vote tallies in Nicaragua at the end of the day showed about 65% of the eligible voters voted [very good considering there was a campaign encouraging abstention called Manos Limpias (Clean Hands) meaning no stained thumb which marked voters]. Seventy-six percent of the people voted to re-elect the President and FSLN Party candidates to the National Assembly. Based on how many people filed past us on election day, and the vocal support for the incumbent government, there is no doubt who the Nicaraguan people were voting for. Many people told us they support the government because of the social programs like universal health care, free public education including university and technical schools, infrastructure like roads, hospitals and schools, and advances in water and electricity. I am very confident that the election results reflect the will of the Nicaraguan people.
The US and other colonial powers did not recognize the vote. Biden and the US press said without evidence that the election was a sham, and Biden signed a bill passed by both houses of Congress to escalate a hybrid war against Nicaragua. But more than 153 nations did recognize the election! According to the United Nations no country needs the recognition of other nations. It’s the recognition by their own people that is important.
* Rick Kohn is a Professor in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Maryland. He has worked on extension and research projects in the US, Nigeria, and Nicaragua. He covered the Nov. 7 general election in Nicaragua