Ulaanbaatar
Voting machines tested ahead of June 24 election
Politics
Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. There are only two days left for Mongolian voters to head to the polls for the 2020 Parliamentary election, scheduled to be held on June 24. To ensure preparations for the elections, the General Election Commissions on June 20, Saturday, tested voting machines to be used during the election to check if they are working properly and prevent from any errors in the vote-counting process.
As stated in the applicable law, the voting machines must be delivered to all polling stations by at least three days before the voting day, all voting machines and automated systems have been delivered and installed at 2070 polling stations nationwide.
Complaints had been received from some political parties and coalitions running for the election about malfunction of some voting machines, causing votes to be counted incorrectly. Therefore, tests on the devices were conducted twice with representatives and observers from those coalitions in present, by re-counting mock ballot papers by hand to verify the machine counts.
The voting machines to be deployed for the forthcoming election had been in use since 2012 for two parliamentary, two local and two presidential elections.
Out of a total of 2,132,352 eligible voters, 10 percent or 228,307 people are first-time voters who are in the age range of 18-22, 670,699 people aged 23-34 years old, 605,132 people aged 35-47 years old, 410,918 people aged 48-60 years old and 217,296 people aged 61 or above. There are 899,006 eligible voters aged 18-34, making up a large portion or 42 percent of the voting-eligible population for this year’s election.
