[Peace-discuss] An account of the Haitian election

[C. G. Estabrook]

  Haiti’s Elections: Right Result, For The Wrong Reason
  Brian Concannon Jr., Esq.
  February 17, 2006

On February 7, Haitian voters went to the polls to elect a
President for the fourth time since 1990. Through great
patience and determination they overcame official
disorganization, incompetence and discrimination, and for the
fourth time since 1990 handed their chosen candidate a
landslide victory. And for the fourth time Haitian elites,
with support from the International Community, started
immediately to undercut the victory, seeking at the
negotiation table what they could not win at the voting booth.

The foothold for the negotiation was an impasse over whether
the successful candidate, Rene Preval, won the 50% of the vote
necessary to avoid a runoff election against his nearest
competitor. Although early official results and the unofficial
tallies by the Preval campaign, international observers and
journalists all showed Mr. Preval comfortably above the 50%
bar, after 5 days of counting his official results crept 1.3%
below it.

The negotiations resulted in a deal that changes the way that
the Electoral Council treats blank ballots, which, according
to the Council’s calculation, puts Mr. Preval back above 50%.
By giving Mr. Preval the election, the agreement closes the
book on serious charges that the Interim Government of Haiti
(IGH) manipulated vote tabulations and discarded ballots to
prevent him from winning. It also allows the international
community to say, after two years under the brutal and
undemocratic IGH, that there is now democracy in Haiti.

The election deal gives a little something to everyone, and
that’s the problem. Elections are not supposed to make
everyone happy; they are supposed to apportion political power
according to majority vote, on the basis of set rules. In all
likelihood, a correct tabulation of the votes would have given
Mr. Preval a first round victory, as exit polls and unofficial
tabulations had predicted. Although the negotiated agreement
reaches the same result as a correct tabulation would have
reached, it does so by changing the rules instead of
correcting the violations of the rules.

The deal provides leverage for those seeking to delegitimize
Preval’s presidency and block the progressive social and
economic policies that he was elected to implement. The
election’s also-rans are already crying foul, and they will be
joined by more voices from Haiti’s elite and the International
Community. Soon enough, invoking “the contested elections of
February 2006” will suffice to justify an array of economic
and political coercion against Haiti’s elected government.
                                                             
                                                             
Even Leslie Manigat, the second place finisher, wins with the
deal. He earned less than 12% of the votes the first time
around, and had no chance of winning a fair second round vote.
There were 17,000 more mistakes- unmarked or improperly marked
ballots- than Manigat votes.  Even if all 30 of the other
losing candidates had thrown their support behind Mr. Manigat-
and many had already declared for Preval- he still would have
been far short of a victory.

The deal spares Mr. Manigat a drubbing in the second round,
and more importantly, allows him to claim, forever, that he
was cheated out of a chance to win on the second round. He got
this ball rolling by immediately calling a press conference to
criticize the International Community and the IGH for caving
into the threat of violence.

Mr. Manigat is right that no one should have caved into the
threat of violence. But they should have caved into the clear
popular vote in favor of Mr. Preval.

The Problem
The defective vote tabulation is just the latest in a long
string of efforts to minimize the impact of the poor voters
who backed Preval. The IGH engaged in a comprehensive program
to suppress political activities of the Lavalas movement,
where Mr. Preval drew most of his support, in the ten months
before the elections. Several prominent politicians were not
able to participate as candidates or activists because they
were kept in jail illegally. Political prisoners included
Haiti’s last constitutional Prime Minister, a former member of
the House of Deputies, the former Minister of the Interior,
and dozens of local officials and grassroots activists. When
Haiti’s most prominent dissident, Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste, was
diagnosed  with leukemia, it took a massive campaign,
including intervention of top U.S. Republicans, just to obtain
his provisional release for desperately needed treatment.
            Making Registration Difficult
The voting registration process systematically discouraged
poor rural and urban voters from signing up. Where Haiti’s
democratic government provided over 10,000 voter registration
centers for elections in 2000, the IGH installed less than
500. The offices would have been too few and far between for
many voters even if they had been evenly distributed. But
placement was heavily weighted in favor of areas likely to
support the IGH and its allies. Halfway through the
registration period, for example, there were three offices in
the upscale suburb of Petionville, and the same number in the
large and largely roadless Central Plateau Department. In
cities, the poor neighborhoods were the last to get
registration centers, and Cite Soleil, the largest poor
neighborhood of all, never got one.
Complaints and protests forced the IGH to extend the
registration period three times and open additional
registration facilities. Eventually over 3.5 million voters
registered, about three-quarters of the estimated eligible
voters. But we will never know how many voters could not get
to a registration center, or gave up after losing too many
precious work days in the effort. We do know that the
registration difficulties disproportionately impacted the
rural and urban poor, who voted overwhelmingly for Preval.
            Making Campaigning Difficult
Neither the Lavalas movement nor the Preval campaign was able
to effectively engage in pre-election campaigning. Police
repeatedly fired guns at peaceful pro-Lavalas demonstrations
throughout the two years of the IGH’s reign. In January, a
pro-government gang destroyed structures erected for a Preval
campaign speech in the town of St. Marc, canceling the event.
No arrests were made. Violence and threats of violence forced
the cancellation of subsequent events, even the campaign’s
grand finale the week before the election. 
Election Day Vote Suppression

The IGH had limited the voting centers to 807, which would
have been inadequate even if the elections had run smoothly
(Los Angeles County, with a slightly larger population but
only 37% of Haiti’s land area and infinitely better private
and public transportation, had about 4,400 polling places in
November 2005). But by 1 PM on election day, Reuters’ headline
read: “Chaos, fraud claims mar Haiti election.” Most election
offices opened late and lacked ballots or other materials;
many did not become fully functional until mid-afternoon.
Voters arrived at the designated centers to find the center
had been moved at the last minute. Many who found the center
identified on their voting card waited in line for hours only
to be told they could not vote because their names were not on
the list. At some centers, tens of thousands of voters were
crammed into a single building, creating confusion, and in one
case a deadly stampede.

As with the registration deficiencies, the poor bore the
lion’s share of the election day problems. The two voting
centers for Cite Soleil, both located well outside the
neighborhood, saw the worst. One of the two, the Carrefour
Aviation site, was transferred at the last minute to a single
building where 32,000 voters had to find the right line to
wait in without posted instructions, lists of names or an
information center. Throughout the day, journalists and
observers noted over and over that centers in Petionville and
other wealthy areas were better organized and equipped.

As with registration, many voters persevered despite the
obstacles. After frustrated would-be voters took to the
streets in spontaneous protests, the IGH made concessions,
such as keeping the polls open later and allowing people with
voting cards whose names were not on the local list to vote in
some places. By the end of the day, most voting centers were
operating at a minimal level, and over 60% of registered
voters did vote. But we will never know how many people gave
up, because they were sick or frustrated or needed to get back
to their families.

Counting Some of the Votes

After the problems with registration and voting, Mr. Preval’s
supporters were pleasantly surprised that the Provisional
Electoral Council, or CEP, gave him a large lead in initial
reports.  On Thursday, the CEP announced that with 22% of the
votes counted, Preval had a commanding lead with 62% of the
vote. Mr. Manigat trailed at 11%, and Charles Henri Baker, in
third place, had 6%. Unofficial reports of the local results
from international and Haitian observers and journalists
consistently had Preval far over 50%. But by Saturday night
the CEP had reduced Preval’s official vote to 49.61%; by
Monday it was at 48.7%, about 22,500 votes below 50%.

The IGH claims that Preval’s decrease was the result of more
information coming in and better calculations. But many
questions about the tabulation process, combined with the
efforts to suppress the Lavalas vote before and during
election day, raise doubts about those claims. On Tuesday
afternoon, Mr. Preval claimed that he had proof that he won
54% of the vote and that the Electoral Council had
fraudulently reduced his number.
Shortly after Mr. Preval’s announcement, Haitian television
broadcast such proof: thousands of ballots, some burnt, most
of them Preval votes, found in a dump near Cite Soleil, and
not far from the CEP’s tabulation center. Preval’s opponents
claim that his supporters dumped the ballots as a provocation
after his speech. But that theory does not explain why
witnesses report seeing the ballots at the dump for a day
before the speech, nor how thousands of ballots were removed
from CEP custody.

A large number of tally sheets from polling centers are not
being counted. 254 sheets were destroyed, reportedly by gangs
from political parties opposed to Preval.  504 tally sheets
reportedly lack the codes needed to enter them officially. The
missing tally sheets probably represent about 190,000 votes-
over 9% of the total votes cast- and according to the UN,
disproportionately affect poor areas that support Preval. Mr.
Preval would not have needed to win an overwhelming percentage
of these 190,000 votes to increase his lead by the 22,500.

            Who’s In Charge?

The Electoral Council, which was named through a complicated
process in 2004, is supposed to be running the tabulation of
votes. In fact, Jacques Bernard, who was appointed “Executive
Director” of the Council- a position not previously recognized
in Haitian law- by the Prime Minister late last year, is
running the Council’s activities. Councilor Pierre Richard
Duchemin charges Mr. Bernard with “manipulation” of the
results, and “an effort to stop people from asking questions.”
Another Councilor, Patrick Fequiere, claims that Mr. Bernard
is working without the Council and not telling them where his
information is coming from. The UN Peacekeeping mission was
forced to remove the doors to the tabulation center to prevent
Mr. Bernard and his advisors from acting secretly.

            Null and Blank Votes

Electoral officials have discarded 147,765 votes, over 7% of
the total, as “null.” Article 185 of the Electoral Code allows
officials to nullify ballots if they “cannot recognize the
intention or political will of the elector.” As the U.S.
experience with butterfly ballots and hanging chads
demonstrated, voters are going to make mistakes even under the
best conditions. Haiti’s conditions were far from the best-
Presidential ballots were complicated, with 33 candidates,
each with a photo, an emblem and the names of the candidate
and the party; voters were tired from walking and waiting;
some voting was done in the dark by candlelight; and many
voters are unused to filling out forms or writing. All these
factors could lead to a high number of mistakes-like marking
two boxes- that made determining the voters’ choice impossible.

But 147,765 voided votes is a high number, suspiciously high
since the decision to nullify was made by local officials
handpicked by an Electoral Council that had no representation
from Preval’s Lespwa party or Lavalas. Overly strict criterion
(such as requiring an “x” to be completely within a
candidate’s box), even if neutrally applied, would have had a
disproportionate impact on poor voters, who are more unused to
filling out forms than their better-heeled compatriots, and
therefore more likely to make mistakes.

Another group of votes, 85,290, or 4.6% of he total valid
votes, are classified as blank ballots.  These votes were
actually counted against Preval, because under the election
law they are included in the total number of valid votes that
provides the baseline for the 50% threshold. This is a
potentially reasonable system, just unreasonably applied to
Haiti. In principle the system allows voters to show their
displeasure with all the candidates by voting for no one,
which can make sense in places where voting is easier. In
practice the system makes no sense in Haiti- it is absurd to
think that 85,000 people, many without enough to eat, would
leave their babies, their fields and other work and spend
hours walking or waiting in the tropical heat just to say they
did not like any of the 33 candidates. A more likely
explanation is that some voters got confused by the
complicated ballots and marked nothing. Again, this problem
would disproportionately affect poor voters likely to vote for
Preval.

The blank and null ballots combined exceeded Mr. Manigat’s
vote by 17,000. The rules for blank and null votes are
consistent with previous Haitian elections, so it is hard to
call the rules themselves fraudulent. But the scale of the
distortion of the vote caused by these rules was both
foreseeable and preventable. The same problem has arisen at
every election since 1990, most of which were observed by the
UN and the Organization of American States, which were active
in preparing the elections this time around. The distortion
could be sharply reduced with a simple voter education
campaign: going into poor neighborhoods, demonstrating how to
mark ballots and giving voters an opportunity to practice on
sample ballots.

There was money available for such a program- the election
cost over $70 million dollars, more than $30 for every vote
cast- most of it coming from abroad. The political parties,
many of which represented a fraction of one percent of the
electorate, received generous subsidies. But no concerted
effort was made to help the much larger share of the voters
who had demonstrated difficulty with filling out the ballots.

The Best Solution

The remedy to the problems with the vote tabulation should
have been to carefully redo the calculations, in the open.
First, the math from all the calculations that were previously
made should have been checked against the original tally
sheets. Where the tally sheets lacked the codes, the local
officials should have been tracked down to confirm that the
results are correct.

In the case of electoral materials intercepted on the way to
the CEP, it is possible to reconstruct the result through the
Electoral Code’s backup systems. The actual counting of the
ballots is done on site, immediately after the closing of the
polls, by each Bureau de Vote (each Bureau serves 400 voters).
The Bureau officials conduct the counting, but are observed by
mandataires, or representatives of political parties. A report
listing the results of the counting is prepared, and at least
six copies are made. The Bureau officials and the mandataires
all sign each of the copies if they agree with the report. The
copies are then distributed widely: one is posted on the
voting center door, one copy each is sent to the Communal
Electoral Office, the Departmental Electoral Office, and the
Electoral Council, and each mandataire is entitled to one.

Presumably these copies will leave the Bureau in many
different directions. It may be easy to intercept the official
results in some areas, but it would be much harder to track
down all the copies in the hands of mandataires. It would be
difficult for a mandataire to introduce a fraudulent copy of
the results that were intercepted, because that would require
forging several signatures.

The null votes could have been rechecked through a procedure
that applied consistent rules across the country. The null
ballots are supposed to be segregated in a separate envelope,
so it would be easy to go through the envelopes from a few
Bureaus, to ascertain whether there were enough improperly
nullified ballots to justify a comprehensive review. If Preval
could have added 22,500 votes to his lead from the 147,000
null votes, this alone would have put him over the top.

The blank ballot rule is inappropriate, and it should be
changed. But it should be changed for Haiti’s next election,
when it should be less of a problem anyway because of better
voter education.

The ballots found in the Cite Soleil dump could have been
traced. All ballots are numbered, and each Bureau keeps a
record of the numbers on the ballots it used and did not use.
The chain of custody could have been followed, to see how the
ballots left CEP custody.

Following these procedures would have been time consuming, but
it would have provided verifiable answers to the questions
raised about the vote tabulation, and a clear answer as to
whether Mr. Preval needed to face a second round. It also
would have provided other answers- whether the charges of
manipulation in the tabulations were justified, and who
diverted the ballots to the Cite Soleil dump.

In giving up his right to a correct tabulation of the vote,
Mr. Preval probably calculated that the international
community, which had not complained about the inadequate
registration and voting facilities, and only lightly
complained about the IGH’s political prisoners, would show
similar restraint when faced with tabulation irregularities.
And he knew that if the first round could be stolen from him,
the second round could as well.

The Chosen Solution

The negotiators, instead of correcting the tabulation, decided
to change the rules for the calculation of blank votes. They
allotted blank votes to the candidates’ totals proportionately
to each one’s existing vote share. So Preval got 48.7% of the
blank votes, Manigat 12%, etc., which pushed Preval up over
the 50% bar. This solution does make sense- it assumes,
probably correctly, that the blank votes resulted from
confusion, and allocates the votes accordingly. The result is
the same as if the CEP simply discarded the blank votes, and
treated them the same as null votes.

But what is sensible is not always what is legal. Preval’s
opponents know that a regime that can be negotiated into power
can be negotiated out of power. They have already staked out
the position that Preval is illegitimate because the deal
changed the rules of the game in the middle of the contest.
They will keep saying it, and will soon enough be joined by
the International Community who will keep saying it.  In the
not-too-distant future, the election’s illegitimacy will be
accepted as “fact” in the elite Haitian and international
press, at the UN, the OAS and the International Financial
Institutions. The “fact” will justify withholding money for
schools and hospitals, and sending money to political parties
with no electoral support. The fact that Mr. Manigat had no
chance of winning a second round, widely acknowledged now,
will be forgotten or never learned by the next rotation of
diplomats and journalists to Haiti.

Conclusion

An editorial in this Friday’s New York Times proclaims that
this future begins now. The Times declares that the election
deal “tarnishes the democratic legitimacy” of Preval’s
landslide. It recommends that Preval remove the tarnish by
“reaching out to his opponents” (e.g. pursuing policies that
the voters rejected), and “reining in his violence-prone
supporters.” The editorial did not suggest that Mr. Preval’s
opponents, many of whom were key players in the violent
overthrow of Haiti’s democracy two years ago which led to
thousands of deaths, rein in their supporters. Nor, when it
declared that “Haiti will need international support for a
long time,” did the Times mention its own groundbreaking
report of January 29 that the U.S., among other members of the
International Community, intentionally undermined and
overthrew Haiti’s elected government in 2004.

Although the Times does not find the context of two weeks or
two years ago relevant, it does catalogue Preval’s sins from
his first administration, and it is a fair bet that we will
hear this list often over the next five years.  The police
“remained brutal and corrupt” (by any account, the police have
become much more brutal and much more corrupt under the IGH);
“no progress was made toward creating a competent judiciary”
(Preval’s administration saw the two best human rights
prosecutions in Haiti’s history in 2000, both lauded by the
UN, Amnesty International and, among others, the New York
Times; Preval also made the Judges Academy, dismantled by the
IGH, operational); “legislative elections were badly flawed;”
“drug trafficking flourished;” etc.

Last week’s election was Haiti’s fourth Presidential election
since 1990.  The previous three- 1990, 1995 and 2000- were all
conducted without serious violence. Each time, the voters
supported the candidate of the Lavalas political movement at
levels unheard of in “mature democracies”-no runner-up ever
topped 16% of the vote. But each time a minority in Haiti,
with support from the International Community, successfully
limited this mandate. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the
victor in the first and third of those elections, suffered two
successful coup d’etats, and spent half of his two terms in
exile. President Preval managed to spend his whole term in
office and pass power to an elected successor (the first
Haitian President to do so), but a manufactured political
crisis and perpetual squabbling about the extent of the
Lavalas landslides prevented the seating of a legislature.
More important, the crisis successfully diverted President
Preval’s energies and attention away from the economic and
social development policies he was elected to implement.

Haiti’s politics are not parlor games. Each coup d’etat leads
to thousands of deaths, and many more times that are killed by
diseases that would be prevented or treated by the programs of
a less embattled government. The life expectancy for men in
Haiti has dropped below 50. It is far past time for the
International Community to stop condemning Haiti to repeating
this outrageously unjust history.

Brian Concannon Jr., Esquire, directs the Institute for
Justice & Democracy in Haiti, www.ijdh.org, and observed
several elections in Haiti for the Organization of American
States.  

<http://www.ijdh.org/articles/article_recent_news_2-17-06.htm>