No evidence that ballots were pre-printed with official mark – Court

The court has found that the claim that ballots used in the 2015 general elections were pre-printed with the official mark and issued by the Supervisor of Elections (SOE) to the presiding officers, is unmeritorious.

Justice Stanley John, a former Court of Appeal judge from Trinidad, delivered his decision on March 21 to dismiss both petitions filed by New Democratic Party(NDP) candidates Lauron Baptiste and Benjamin Exeter.

In delivering his ruling, Justice John said there was no evidence on the serious issues raised by the petitioners, save for partiality.

In the detailed analysis provided by his 63-page judgment, published on the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court(ECSC) website, John confirmed that one of the issues that he determined to be unsupported by evidence was the claim of ballots pre-printed with the official mark.

Both of the petitioners had claimed that all ballots had the official mark pre-printed on them, but they alleged that in some cases, the official mark had been printed on the counterfoil.

An affidavit sworn to by then SOE Sylvia Findlay-Scrubb, had been the focus in this concern.

In this document, sworn on December 21, 2015, the SOE said, “There is also the allegation that some ballots did not have the official mark, this is inaccurate. All ballot papers issued to Presiding Officers had the official mark as required by law. What, however, I noticed was that in a few instances the official mark was printed on the counterfoil. The counterfoil is part of the ballot paper.”

However, in January, 2016, Findlay-Scrubb sought to ‘correct’ this, saying there may have been a misunderstanding.

She stated in a letter to lawyer Richard Williams (instructing for the attorney general), that the official mark had not been printed on the ballots, and it was not on the ballots she issued to the presiding officers.

In her witness statement filed in June of 2018, she reiterated this, this time going into more depth in the process.

She said she supervised the preparation of the template of the ballots for all constituencies, and from there they were sent to be printed. She said the templates had no official mark on them.

“I also had cause to visit the printers to examine the ballot papers which were being printed because of certain problems that had arisen. There was no official mark printed on any of the ballot papers I saw,” she continued.

After the printing she also examined them, and this did not change, she said.

Under cross-examination, Exeter had said that he did not recall seeing any ballots upon which the mark was pre-printed. He was also shown the pictures of the ballots that he himself had admitted into evidence, and he agreed that it appeared that there was no pre-printed official mark on them.

These photographs were thought by the judge to conclusively determine that the petitioners’ assertion was incorrect.

In addition, no polling agent or counting agent offered evidence of their observations of such ballots, the judge wrote.

“The Court would have expected such evidence to be forthcoming from Ms Eustace and/or Ms Barnwell, who both testified to having held ballots. Neither of them alleged that the ballots which they held were pre-printed with the official mark,” John disclosed.

“The Petitioners having presented no evidence in support of the allegation that ballots were pre- printed with the official mark, the Court finds the complaint is unmeritorious,” the judge found.