Fun with Democracy> Travels

December 3^rd, 2006

The next morning we were supposed to meet at 4:30 AM to drive out to Camp-Perrin, the location of 4 out of the 5 voting locations we were scheduled to observe. Hohengo was running late so I knocked on his hotel room door to make sure he was getting ready. I could clearly hear the voice of a woman in his room so that explains why he didn’t come downstairs until 5:00AM. Jerry decided that he would pair up with John and I would be paired up with Hohengo for the day. Hohengo and I, along with my invaluable driver Fabrice took the 45 minute drive over unpaved road to our first polling location, Mercant. Mercant was a school with roughly ten classrooms, all made of cinderblocks that allowed air to flow through during the hot tropical days. All ten classrooms had separate polling stations which were called BVs. If you want more information on the process let me know and I can send you a report that I wrote. Instead I will just give you a rundown and some of the highlights.

First off, we had pretty much no instruction on how to go about our jobs. All of the work I did was just my interpretation of what seemed right in relation to the questionnaire I was given to record my data. My teammate Hohengo was thoroughly confused by the process and ended up just copying down everything that I wrote like a kid who didn’t do their homework. When he wasn’t copying me, he was making some stupid and often highly entertaining mistakes. To begin with he did not understand what the word observation meant, (Nor did John and Jerry for that matter) and he would try to get the poll workers to seal the boxes, straighten out the people in line, etc. I explained to him that we were supposed observe and write down our findings so that future elections could be run better. My favorite part was when I explained to him that we should keep an eye on the voters and make sure that nobody is violating the secrecy of their vote. He immediately walked up behind a voter filling out a ballot and leaned over him to watch what he was doing. A member of the polling staff yelled at him and I just shook my head. For most of the day I worked with my driver and let Hohengo wander around hoping he would keep himself out of trouble.

One of the best ways to find voting irregularities was to listen for arguments. Now perhaps running over to groups of 20 or more angry people yelling at each other may not be a good idea in a country with more guns than butter, but I was armed with my volunteer police training from my beat on the Prague streets. Throughout the day Fabrice and I would listen in to various arguments, which were for the most part non-violent. That was until 3:45 PM, only 15 minutes before the polls were scheduled to close. A crowd of 30 people had assembled around the entrance of one the polling stations and they seemed particularly angry. Fabrice, Hohengo and I made our way through the crowd into the cinder block classroom and through Fabrice I started questioning people to find out what was going on. A man had been accused of attempting to vote twice. I don’t know if he was innocent or guilty, but I was bit worried he was going to get lynched as Haiti is well known for street justice. Outside a pretty big fist fight broke out that tuned into a small riot. It was quickly broken up by the security guards who sprayed the crowd with tear gas. People scattered in all directions with their shirt held over their mouths. Some of the gas came into the polling station but sadly I didn’t cry a tear. This was no “field of dreams” moment for me. In retrospect I wish I had made a stronger effort to enrich my tear gassing story by running outside and spinning around sound of music style in the gas.

Soon after, I went over to a polling station to witness the closing. Right away they committed a major error in the counting process that could have affected the integrity of the results, but as an observer all I could do was write it up in my notes. At about 5:30 the sun went down and from there on I was able to experience Democracy by candlelight, which is pretty romantic. The count finished at 10:23 PM, several hours longer than any other observer in Haiti had witnessed. While voter participation countrywide had been a paltry 10% my particular polling station had a turnout of about 70%. Poor Hohengo missed two dates because of the late closing, but had gotten the phone number of one of the polling station workers. My favorite part of the night was that throughout the count there were many people peering in through the breaks in the cinder blocks to observe the proceedings. It was amazing about how much these people cared about this local election. We got back to our hotel 18 and a half hours after we had left, but all in one piece. Later on that night I would be woken from a deep sleep to be informed that I had been elected mayor of Camp-Perrin.