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center; and that a particular polling place showed that 2,550 votes we recorded,
more than 200% above the threshold vote that should be at a single polling place.
1st appellants’ third witness testified to the change of polling place on voting
day without notice to the voters. This how he stated same in his testimony in chief:
“NEC had a registration on time in Volocawhen Town and that
registration when on for some weeks. I did the registration there and
they extended it to the mining camp on the day before the election. I
noticed, we saw the boxes been taken to camp America which was not
the original NEC registration site instead of volocawhen Town they
took the box at Camp America mining camp about six hours walk
without notice to the community. This had hundreds of citizens not to
vote, if you take the distance into consideration most of the voters did
not vote from volocawhen Town to Camp America, the distance was a
major impact in terms of turn out to vote.”
1st appellants’ fourth witness Ms. Darline Clinton, a poll watcher at the
Bardnerville Public School polling place #3 testified that after polling had closed and
all the observers left, she went back and caught the presiding officer’s hand in the
ballot box; that he broke the seal. Here is her testimony in chief:
“On that day after the counting of the ballots we all left awaiting my
friends, because they were in the other room checking, it was late,
while awaiting them I saw the Presiding officer putting his hands into
the ballot box, so I went closer and later he went and took the sixer
[scissors] from the table and broke the seal, I raised alarm and [I] said
we all closed it and you are breaking it. That is what happened and the
man that went for the report told me the reason for which they broke
the seal was because they made mistake and put something in the
ballot and I told him your supposed to call us before breaking it.”
In an apparent quest to impeach the credibility of the witness’ testimony,
the following questions were asked by the appellee on the cross:
Q, Madam Witness, did anybody meet with you, whether in this room
or at your party about what you were coming to say here today?
A, No
Q, Madam Witness when you noticed that the seal according to you
or alleged by you was broken what did you do?
A, I said when the first seal was broken, I raised alarm, we demanded
that the box was not going until they can recheck the ballot, so they
decided to place a new seal on the ballot, so they gave us the new seal
number, the second closing seal.
While we do not see the relevance of these questions, we should note
however they do not prove or disprove the witness’ testimony. It is important