Public Officers Train for Election Day Duties

On March twelfth, Belizeans will head to the polls to elect a new government. To ensure everything runs smoothly, public officers who will serve as returning officers, presiding officers, and election clerks are undergoing training. Today marked the second round of training. While some officers are familiar with the process, the new ones have a few things to learn. Chief Elections Officer Josephine Tamai emphasized that the training aims to ensure everyone fully understands their roles and responsibilities, leaving no room for confusion.

 

Josephine Tamai, Chief Elections Officer

“We need to ensure that the forms that they submit to us are filled out accurately and properly. And so we’re actually doing practical exercises today with those officers.”

 

Marion Ali

“Okay, so they’re learning things like what, for the new ones?”

 

Josephine Tamai

“Well, for the new ones, we introduce the forms to them. We also want for them to ensure that they fill out the form properly and for example, sometimes when people make errors on a form, people would write over rather than just putting a line through and properly initialing it. So we’re doing training in terms of the importance of those things for those persons because at the end of the day, we need to ensure that the information that they provide that was on the forms are accurate. These forms are the forms that they will utilize to come up with the persons who have the most votes on election day. And so we need to ensure the additions are accurate. We have done some of the training for them. We also introduce an application that makes it easier for them to cross-check that the forms are added properly and so it makes it so much easier for officers. So we’re training them on how to utilize it. This is not the first time we’re utilizing it, but at the same time we have some officers who are new to the process. And so we need to ensure that they’re competent and capable of ensuring that the information is accurate.”