TheCable

Festus Okoye, the national commissioner for information and voter education at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), says a vote will be considered void if the ballot paper is put in the wrong box.

Fielding questions from journalists on Channels TV on Saturday, Okoye said the onus lies on presiding officers at each polling unit to educate voters.

“Yes,” he responded when asked if placing in the wrong box will make a vote void.

“We might not sort out wrong ballot papers, the moment you start moving ballot papers around, it will create confusion.

“The moment you misplace a ballot paper, unfortunately, we might not consider that vote.

“All the ballots will be counted separately. We are going to count the ballot for the presidential separately and get on with that and the one for senatorial and house of representatives will be counted separately.

“If you look at the ballot boxes, you can see that there is a tag indicating which one is for presidential, senatorial and house of representatives.

“And we have also trained the presiding officer that before they start, they need to the voters who are already on the queue what the procedures are so that they will know the boxes.”

Okoye also assured that chances of ink smearing ballot papers are unlikely because the ink used by the commission is the quick dry.

He also said the commission has made provisions for additional ballot boxes in the event that the one in use gets filled.