Mesn parallel tally verifies MEC presidential results

Malawi Electoral Support Network (MESN), who on the polling day, May 21, deployed 907 observers to conduct a parallel vote tabulation (PVT) at all polling stations and polling streams throughout  the country, says Malawi Electoral Commission’s official presidential results are consistent with its own parallel tabulation.

Mesn  announced, in a statement, incumbent President Peter Mutharika of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as winner with between 36.4 and 40.8 percent of the votes, while Lazarus Chakwera of Malawi Congress Party (MCP) scored between 32.8 and 37.4 percent of the votes and UTM Party’s Saulos Chilima got between 18.8 and 21.4 percent.

“The PVT can independently verify that the official results for the presidential election as announced by MEC reflect ballots cast and counted at polling streams,” says Mesn as it essentially corroborated MEC results, announced by the commission’s chairperson Jane Ansah.

“While PVT does not provide evidence that the presidential results have been manipulated, the PVT results data cannot definitively determine the order for the two leading candidates because of the overlap in the estimated ranges,” reads the statement in part signed by Mesn chairperson Steve Duwa.

It said  PVT observers reported that there were party representatives for Chakwera/MCP at 96 percent and for Mutharika/DPP at 99 percent of sampled polling streams for the counting of presidential results.

“At 96 percent of sampled polling streams with a Chakwera/MCP party representative, the person agreed with the official polling stream presidential results while at 95 percent of polling streams with a Mutharika/DPP party representative, the person agreed with the official polling stream presidential results.”

It also indicated that at 96 percent of sampled polling stations, an MCP party representative signed the official presidential results form while at 99 percent of sampled polling stations a DPP party representative signed official presidential results form.

MESN is a registered network of 27 non-governmental and faith-based organisations in Malawi and was formed with the core objective of facilitating coordination among civil society organizations engaged in election monitoring, civic and voter education in Malawi and a platform for dialogue, advocacy and lobbying on electoral matters.

Since its establishment in 2003, MESN has successfully observed the 2004 and 2009 parliamentary and presidential elections as well as the 2014 Tripartite Elections.

For the 2019 Tripartite Elections, MESN deployed nearly 1,400 volunteers across the country to observe on Election Day and prior to that it deployed 57 long-term observers to all 28 districts who provided structured observation of the pre-election period as part of its PVT initiative.

MESN also deployed 386 observers to all 193 constituencies during biometric voter registration and, subsequently, to observe instances of violence against women in elections under the Gender Elections Engagement Room.