What led to invalid votes in Mahottari?

BY OUR CORRESPONDENT Bardibas, Nov. 29:The nation spends a huge sum of money to conduct an election. That’s because every vote cast matters to decide the future leaders of the county. One can win or lose an election by just a single vote. 

But, in four constituencies of Mahottari, more than 1,600 votes cast by the voters for the election to the House of Representatives and Provincial Assembles in the First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) category were invalid. 

The number of invalid votes is higher than the vote margin between the winner and his closest rival. The result would have been different in the district had there been no such large number of invalid votes.

According to the office of the Election Officer, a total of 247,150 votes were cast in the FPTP category in all four constituencies of the district. Of which, 16,093 votes were invalid. 

In Mahottari, the highest number of invalid votes – 4,889 – were found in Constituency 2 and lowest in Constituency 1 at 3,597 votes. Similarly, 3,834 votes were invalid in Constituency 3 and 3,773 in Constituency 4.

Assistant Election Officer at Mahottari constituency 1 Sandesh Adhikari informed that different kinds of invalid votes were cast in the election, saying that some of the ballot papers had a finger print instead of the stamp, some had stamp at the back of the ballot paper, some without stamp and some with stamp in multiple election signs. In this election, most of the ballot papers were found with a stamp or finger prints in four election signs which turned invalid, he added. 

Meanwhile, the voters blamed the political parties, leaders and Election Commission (EC) for the invalid votes.  

Singh Bahadur Yonjan, 62, a voter of Bardibas constituency 1, said that the confusion among the voters were created as the ballot paper model and number were changed in every election. He informed that even he got confused and had stamped in four election signs of a single ballot paper. In this election, voters were not educated about how to cast votes; when leaders explained us that we need to stamp in four papers we understood it as stamping four times, he added.

Chief Electoral Officer Hem Bahadur Sen informed that the political parties and candidates should be serious to decrease the number of invalid votes as this would have a direct effect on them. One should not just rely on EC but the parties and candidates should also pay attention to educating voters, he added.