Variations, similarities in Bobi, EC poll results

On Tuesday, this week, the runner- up in the January 14 presidential polls, Mr Robert Kyagulanyi, aka Bobi Wine, released his own results, which he claimed showed he won with 54.19 per cent.
Incumbent Yoweri Museveni obtained 38.82 per cent, the Opposition politician said, contradicting the official tallies by the Electoral Commission (EC) that declared Mr Museveni, the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) candidate in the race, winner with 58.38 per cent.
Bobi Wine, the runner-up, polled 35.08 per cent of the valid votes, according to the EC.

 The former National Unity Platform (NUP) party candidate claimed Museveni’s victory was made up, but withdrew a petition he had filed to challenge the election outcome mid-way after complaining that the Supreme Court judges were not impartial.

Bobi Wine said he would take the contestation to the court of public opinion, which culminated in the Tuesday press conference in which he publicised figures based on what he said were 25,035 Declaration of Results (DR) Forms from Uganda’s 34,684 polling stations.
At the media briefing, the Opposition politician listed several grounds among which he claimed that Mr Museveni committed various electoral offences; hence, he was not validly elected, an allegation that Mr Museveni’s lawyers and ruling NRM dismissed as legless.

Other claims that Bobi made were that some voters had died before the polls yet there was 100 per cent voter turn-out at 408 polling stations; that there were mismatches between results EC announced and actual figures on DR forms for 1,700 polling stations; that number of votes cast exceeded number of registered voters at some polling stations; and, the electoral body variously inflated votes for Museveni while shrinking his ballots.

Asked about the possibility of 100 per cent voter turn-out at various polling stations, Electoral Commission Spokesman Paul Bukenya said “our system does not reject maximum voter turn up”. “We only reject results with more than 100 per cent turn-out. We receive and process the tally results as presented by the presiding officers,” he said yesterday.
Further, Mr Bukenya explained that as the electoral body, they vigorously carry out voter education and also work with the candidates to encourage their electorate to turn out in big numbers on the polling day and cast their ballots.

“As EC, we don’t speculate on how many voters will turn out on the polling day. What we do is to prepare for each voter by printing for them a ballot paper.” he said.
Yet, when Bobi’s claims made on Tuesday are examined, the only similarity with EC record is of 100 per cent voter turn-out at 408 polling stations while there are significant differences.

For instance, Bobi’s compilations show that some 11.3 million valid votes were cast compared to the 10.4 million that EC recorded, leaving a difference of 544,000 votes that remains unexplained.
Mr David Lewis Rubongoya, the NUP secretary-general, said their results show that more voters turned up to vote than EC had acknowledged.  

“We have forms at some polling stations where all candidates were given zero votes while at some polling stations, figures were played around with to the advantage of President Museveni,” he said.
Adding, “The original DR Forms that we have given have the correct figures and you will find that at many polling stations, the figures that EC has are very different from what we have.”

Bobi’s compilation did not reflect both spoilt and invalid votes which, according to EC final tallies, add to 423,413.
The numbers of DR Forms that NUP says are in its possession, the others it claims were confiscated by police or remained uncollected due to harassment and arrests of its agents, total 34,711, which is higher than total polling stations by 27.

Asked how and why NUP’s statistics showed DR Forms in excess of polling stations, Mr Rubongoya said they had erroneously shared a draft statement with mistakes which presented 27 more DR forms than the total number of forms. 
However, the updated version of the statement, has figures that tally with the official EC statistics.