Monday, March 16th, 2009

By J.R. Claeys

The observation team gathered today to prepare reports to the country's Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) based on the electoral process observed Sunday. In my report to the TSE, I discussed at length voter registration security procedures, the last remaining hole in the elections process where fraud can easily take place. I discussed in a previous blog how a lack of birth records and physical addresses makes it difficult to keep foreigners from registering, or those not of legal age. The Voter I.D. program is working. The polling station security and ballot protection procedures are working. Preventing duplicate votes by staining the finger with ink is working. Yet, the process of voter registration continues to allow citizens of other nations onto the voter rolls. We caught one of those illegal voters at my voting center.

I believe strongly that any time we allow an illegal or ineligible vote to be counted, we are stealing a vote from a legal voter. Unless we have complete faith in our process, we will always wonder if our vote really counted.

In the afternoon the observation team presented our findings to the TSE. In the next election in 2012, we expect to see some of our recommendations implemented to prevent the type of fraud that took place in this election. Each election, the fraud has been reduced, but not eliminated.

Many of you may have read that this is the first time that the FMLN has won the presidency since the bloody civil war that took over 70,000 lives. It is a turning point for this nation that has been lead by the conservative government for decades. Whether I agree with the people's choice is not relevant. I am not here to guarantee an outcome. I am here to guarantee the process is respected and the outcome is the will of the voters.

The result of the election did create some isolated violence throughout the country. Largely small clashes as FMLN celebrated their victory in the streets. The fear of the past few days was that an FMLN loss would result in the celebratory gunfire of last night being trained on people, rather than the sky. Instead, ARENA graciously accepted their defeat and kept their frustrations off of the streets.

The final vote Sunday was reported at 51.3 percent for FMLN and 48.7 percent for ARENA. A close vote and a divided country.

I was invited by an El Salvadorian family here to breakfast at their home tomorrow morning before returning to Kansas. I will be returning tomorrow evening.

» Photo Gallery: Elections Observation Mission