The heads of the polling stations arrived at the voting centers before sunrise, in cities and villages where there was no electricity at this time, making it difficult to prepare the stations for receiving voters, especially since there was no training in this cycle on managing the electoral process, and no prior preparation was allowed for the polling stations due to directives from the Ministry of Interior that prohibited opening the boxes before the voting process began. The surprise came inside the box; when the heads opened them in the morning, they discovered how visionary the state was to place a battery-operated lamp inside each box for perhaps the first time in electoral history. This helped overcome the darkness and allowed for the preparation of the stations before 7 AM, the scheduled time for opening polling centers to voters.
#### Representatives: Intimidation and Incentives
The first and primary challenge faced by the head of the polling station is managing the relationship with the representatives of the electoral machines, who attempt to control the electoral process within the polling stations through two methods: either confusing the head of the station by showcasing him every minute of the electoral process, or appeasing him and the clerk by honoring them, offering their services to secure all the needs for the election day, including food and drink, based on the philosophy of “Feed them and they will shy away.” The result will be one of two outcomes: either the representative takes over the electoral process inside the station with all its legal and illegal details, or the head of the polling station insists on applying the law and becomes a disliked figure navigating between pitfalls set for him.
"I couldn’t even go to the bathroom," says a head of a polling station in the Jbeil area after he rejected the employed methods of bribery and intimidation. This led representatives of one party to pressure him by inciting chaos inside and outside the station, urging people to refuse to stand in lines. None of the heads of polling stations succumbed to the previous attempts; rather, one went further by personally bringing from home what he needed in terms of drinks and later ordering food through delivery to the polling center, stating, "I don’t want to break my back even for a sip of water," which made him reportedly more capable of managing without interference. Conversely, another head of a polling station accepted all forms of inducement by being hosted the day before voting at the mayor's house and receiving meals during the election day, allowing the responsibility of the polling station to shift to one of the representatives, who even wrote the minutes after the counting and voting processes concluded. This prompted the officer in charge of the center to direct a neighboring head of a polling station and clerk, after finishing their work, to go to this polling station and oversee what was happening in order to limit violations.
#### Fame Instead of Identity
The second challenge lies in the relationship with voters, which must be conducted according to legal requirements, starting with verifying personal information mentioned on the ID or passport, leading up to signing the voter lists and leaving. Here, the heads of polling stations faced a number of unexpected "potholes," such as some voters insisting on voting away from the privacy screens, or a female voter requesting to vote without presenting any identification because she was "known in the village," while another presented a foreign passport as an identification document enabling her to vote.
What was mentioned could now be recounted as a joke, but it does not reflect the tension caused when such incidents occur inside the polling rooms because failing to vote means losing a vote, necessitating intervention at higher levels. In one of the southern districts, the acting mayor personally called the head of the polling station to compel him to allow a person to vote whose identification information did not match the voter lists; however, what the high-ranking official did not expect was the "no" he heard from the head of the polling station, who did not stop there but halted the voting process to let all the representatives know that the acting mayor was not a competent authority in this matter, but rather the Ministry of Interior through its hotline.
The violations of party representatives do not stop there; they continue to attempt to establish a fait accompli within the stations by entering with voters behind the privacy screens, greeting them personally and welcoming them to make it appear very natural, then ensuring that they "vote freely" for their list. The head of the polling station rejected this behavior, prompting the representative to bring in young men and line them up at the door of the station as a form of threat and intimidation.
#### Illiterates in the Polling Stations
It seems that everything is permissible in the electoral process, and in the Lebanese manner, "Everything will be arranged." A representative asks the head of the polling station to enter with illiterates in the village to assist them in voting. He initially agrees, but soon notices that the representative did not ask the voter for their opinion, prompting him to halt the process and personally volunteer to assist the illiterates and those facing other difficulties like the blind, who are aware of everything around them, but whose right to free voting is undermined by a relative who began writing without even asking them. Several heads of polling stations noticed this, and one confirms that these individuals have no say, and they are being voted for against their will, depriving them of their freedom as well as that of other healthy voters who face unfair competition since the representative can vote dozens of times through this “assistance” in voting.
The bigger problem is that many employees have become accustomed to the inherited notion that election day is a recreational outing to move from one area to another, benefiting from the honors they receive, thus placing them under all the previously mentioned pressures... To eliminate this, the state must provide all necessities from transportation to sleeping accommodations and even food, but the state is absent.
Fouad Bizri - Al-Akhbar
