Haiti 2016 Presidential Election Re-run

CIEVE verified a national sample of 3,235 polling-station tally sheets and found complete case files for only 294 of them, no partial voter list in 90.6% of files and no signature list in 12.4%. It recorded 29% of votes cast outside the signature list against only 3.6% of the absentee minutes (procès-verbaux de carence) those votes required, and put untraceable votes at 628,000, about 40% of the 1,560,631 valid votes - 448,000 cast without the required absentee minute plus an estimated 180,250 recorded against identity-card numbers it judged false. It concluded that the process had been marked by serious irregularities, grave inconsistencies and massive fraud, held the CEP, the vote tabulation centre, the electoral registry directorate and polling-station staff responsible, and recommended restarting the process. The CEP accepted the recommendation and issued a new calendar on 6 June 2016.

The EU expert mission recorded that 11.42% of presidential polling-station returns were not compiled: 1,252 were set aside after verification and 118 arrived too late. The equivalent figures for the legislative races run at the same polling stations were 6.31% to 7.09%. The Nord and Nord-Est departments lost more than 20% of their returns, Grande-Anse and Sud-Est about 15%.

The electoral decree requires a two-thirds majority of councillors to release preliminary results. Three councillors, seated for the trade-union, human-rights and peasant and vodou sectors, declined to sign, saying they had not received convincing information about the tally sheets that had been set aside. The final result of 3 January 2017 was, by contrast, adopted unanimously by all nine councillors.

Under article 197 of the constitution and article 18.1 of the electoral decree the CEP is the forum for all electoral disputes and BCEN decisions are final; the Constitutional Council has no electoral jurisdiction. The EU mission found the rules silent or contradictory on how BCEN chambers are formed, how judges may be challenged and how case files are shared with the other party, and recorded recusal attempts and mid-process procedural changes. The OAS mission recommended creating two separate permanent bodies, one for electoral organisation and one for electoral justice.

Acting on appeals by the three runners-up, the third chamber of the BCEN ordered on 20 December 2016 the verification of 1,560 tally sheets together with their counting sheets, signature lists and national identification numbers. Its decision of 2 January 2017 found no massive fraud but irregularities that could not affect the electoral process, set aside 70 tally sheets and ordered 8 more to be counted, which is why the final figures differ slightly from the preliminary ones. The OAS mission, which kept observers permanently at the tabulation centre, reported that the verification had concluded that the returns analysed did not show irregularities that could have affected the electoral process, and the UN Secretary-General reported the same outcome to the Security Council.

CIEVE's measurements are of traceability: missing partial voter lists, missing absentee minutes, votes recorded outside the signature list and identity-card numbers that could not be matched. Its conclusion goes further than those measurements, stating that the process was marked by serious irregularities, grave inconsistencies and massive fraud, that acts committed in breach of the electoral decree were systematic, and that there was an intent to deceive. It assigns institutional responsibility to the CEP, the vote tabulation centre, the electoral registry directorate and polling-station members, records that offences including fraud and forgery in a public document may have been committed, and refers the matter to the competent authorities without naming any individual; no prosecution is recorded in the sources cited here. The commission traces the break in the chain of custody to blank accreditation cards the CEP distributed to political parties without keeping any register of them. The EU took the opposite view of the same election: its report records that the High Representative found the annulment of the October 2015 first round to run counter to the conclusions of the EU observation mission.

Jude Célestin, Jean-Charles Moïse and Maryse Narcisse maintained their rejection of the final results, disputing how the verification had been carried out. The Bureau des Avocats Internationaux and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti said the review procedures were changed during the process and that voter identities were never checked against the national identification office register. Because BCEN decisions are final in law and no external court holds electoral jurisdiction, the objection stands unresolved rather than tested.

The representatives of Jude Célestin, Jean-Charles Moïse and Maryse Narcisse asked for every tally sheet and its associated documents to be analysed before the preliminary result was released, and the three rejected that result. No cited source reconstructs what the 11.42% of uncompiled polling stations would have produced. The EU mission's own assessment was that Moïse's lead made it difficult to envisage that the exclusions could call his first-round qualification into question, but that is a judgement about the size of the margin, not a recovery of the missing returns.