amended, will be referred to throughout this judgment simply as “Order 60”. It is
set out in full in the Appendix to this judgment.
[6]
In accordance with Order 60, the recount commenced on 6 May 2020 and recounts
were subsequently completed for all ten districts on 8 June 2020. The results were
recorded on Statements of Recount, as required by Paragraph 7 of Order 60. These
Statements were then signed by the person conducting the recount and the
representatives of the contesting parties present (among a range of other officials)
as required by Paragraph 8 of Order 60. The information contained in these
Statements, following the steps more detailed in [39] below, were to serve as the
basis of a report from the Chief Election Officer (the CEO). Paragraph 12 of Order
60 required the CEO to tabulate ‘the matrices for the recount of the ten Electoral
Districts’ and to submit them to GECOM ‘in a report, together with a summary of
the observation reports for each District’. Finally, Paragraph 14 of Order 60
provided for the Commission to make a ‘declaration of the results of the final
credible count of the Elections’.
[7]
During the recount process, Mr Joseph Harmon, an Election Agent of the
APNU/AFC alliance, wrote several letters to GECOM alleging anomalies,
irregularities, voter impersonation and fraud. On 13th June the CEO, Mr Keith
Lowenfield, submitted his report. He indicated the votes that were cast for each List
of Candidates but drew attention to what he considered to be widespread
anomalies/irregularities. Wherever he considered that any ballot box was affected
by some irregularity, he took it upon himself to present revised totals that subtracted
the entirety of the ballots of those boxes from the total votes cast and counted. It
was his assessment that ‘the summation of anomalies and instances of voter
impersonation identified in [Districts 1 to 10] clearly does not appear to satisfy the
criteria of impartiality, fairness and compliance with provisions of the Constitution
and the [Representation of the People Act], Cap 1:03’. His opinion was that ‘it
cannot be ascertained that the results for [the Districts] meet the standard of fair
and credible elections’.