ELECTION WATCHDOGS 5/30/17 11:29 AM whether the results on the tally sheet had obviously been altered (Organization of American States 2011). Preliminary results announced by the CEP had indicated that Mirlande Manigat earned first place with 31.4% of the vote, Jude Celestin was in second with 22.5%, and Michel Martelly stood in third with 21.8%. The top two candidates would move on to a runoff election. The new vote count reached by the OAS following the tally sheet review put Martelly in second place and Celestin in third, though the new participants in the runoff were still separated by less than one percent of the vote, making the process extremely contentious (Taft-Morales 2011). Critics have argued that the investigation by the OAS was politically biased and arrived at arbitrary conclusions that altered the results of the election (Johnston and Weisbrot 2011; Morrell 2011). Although the OAS expert verification mission notes that it took care to establish a thorough process to ensure consistency and quality control (Organization of American States 2011), no additional outside observers or candidate agents were present during the audit process to confirm. Outgoing Haitian President René Préval was reportedly not satisfied with the OAS mission’s methodology and the lack of control granted to the CEP in the investigation (Taft-Morales 2011.). In reaching its results, the Mission reviewed only a small subset of the total number of tally sheets (919 out of 11,181 tally sheets, with 234 excluded on the basis of the criteria noted above). Because only a small subset of tally sheets were subject to the mission’s legal analysis, other actors have alleged that “the Mission does not even have a limited legal basis for its result.” (Johnston and Weisbrot 2011). Additionally, approximately 12 percent of tally sheets (representing 156,000 votes) were missing or quarantined by the CEP. As the distribution of votes in the areas represented by these tally sheets apparently varied markedly from the rest of the country, it is entirely possible that their inclusion could have altered the ranking of the candidates as determined by OAS (Johnston and Weisbrot 2011). Although there were a number of concerns raised about the procedures used to trigger tally sheet investigation and the criteria established for this review, the final OAS report noted that the Mission took some steps to ensure standards were consistently applied in the review process. Two-member teams were rotated after one day to allow reviewers to compare their approach to assessing tally sheets. Additionally, data was checked by a third person not involved in the data entry process after it was submitted by reviewers. Tally sheets were then labeled and reviewers’ names were included on the packages, with spot checkers visually evaluating packages at random (Organization of American States 2011). The Mission reviewed only a limited set of evidence sources, including packets of tally sheets and the Election Day incident logs from the UN peacekeeping mission and the CEP Emergency Call Center. The 16