Mock the vote

Election run-off day in Liberia, the crucial, history-making decision for the little country that’s come to represent so much about my freelance career.

Here in Ghana, where 42,000 Liberians live on a refugee camp about an hour outside the capital, asylum-seekers were refused the right to vote by the electoral commission. With Liberia’s roads and communications networks a mess, it was enough of a job to do the election in the country itself without trying to coordinate voting for expatriates and exiles as well. (I also suspect the lure of voting in Liberia was also meant to help refugees make up their minds about going.)

Dave, one of the JHR volunteers, has been working with Cephas and Semantics out at the camp on the Vision and in addition to getting them up and running on the web, they did a live blogcast on the day of the first vote. For today, they dreamt up the idea of doing a mock election but because of the non-political nature of the camp, and to win UNHCR approval, they decided to call it an election survey.

At the disastrous Thursday Quiz Nite fiasco, Dave casually asked what I was doing on Tuesday and whether I’d come out to the camp for the mock vote. I initially thought, no, um, sounds quaint but not really my thing. But then the Star sent me an email about doing something on the day of the election and I thought it would be a good starting point, the only way to really weave in a Ghana angle.

Emily and I met this morning at 8 a.m. – me with slick, greasy hair and already plastered in sweat, as it has been stupidly hot and humid and we were without water – and we made our way to the camp with her reporter, Grace. The ride was much, MUCH smoother than the weekend when I went out by myself. We landed, headed to the Internet café and then began searching for the polling station.

I have to confess, I don’t know Dave at all and what little I do know of him has been largely gleaned from his blog. He is incredibly intense and he and Emily seem to have a blood feud that has made getting to know him a little difficult. But I really got the impression that this was just something he was doing to fill his time. I got the impression that he was a budding gonzo journalist and he was just looking for a way to make the story more interesting to him. Or at least make the story interesting. I didn’t realize that he’s really into electoral and democratic issues and is in the midst of putting together a dissertation on the subject.

Anyway, things were a scramble when we arrived. Under a UNHCR tarp, there were four tables, one for registering, one for ballots, one holding a voting screen made out of a cardboard box cut in half and one with the ballot box, which looked like a white, plastic postal box with a cardboard lid taped on top. Cephas was running around, Semantics and a woman named Claire looked overwhelmed. Dave was running around. Gabby, as usual, was in the middle of a crowd. Stephanie and Vanessa, conscripted on their time off from Bolgatanga, barely looked harried. Kari was in the middle of a mob, nodding her head. Lisa was hovering around the voting screen and ballot box. It was just chaos.

Dave’s blog mentioned they’d tried to do a bit of impromptu voter education, but there is no network for communication at the camp, other than signs, so once word spread that this was happening, people wandered by to figure out what was going on. It was immediately apparent that I had no appreciation for the kind of hard work that went into producing such a smooth election in Liberia. Voting, to me, seems intuitive. I’m not sure why, I guess because we do so many election-type things when we’re young, like electing students councils and church councils and mock elections when we’re too young and to vote. But a lot of Liberians have never voted, or they voted once, in a rigged and wholly unfair election, or they voted but it was more than 20 years ago.

So the masses were masses. And, being Liberians, they were loud. A woman I interviewed in Liberia told me that Liberians are volatile, just like their weather. It changes minute to minute. One minute there’s sunshine and it’s fine. Then suddenly there’s thunder and buckets of rain. Then, nothing but puddles and sun. Their temperament was on display today, as they crowded around and debated whether they should even be doing this kind of experiment. Engaging in political activity at the camp is enough to get them kicked out, so would voting in this survey qualify? Who was in charge, what was their rationale, did they understand the consequences? Liberians, I find, tend to just give their opinion and outline their reasoning and whoever talks the loudest wins. So within five minutes of our arrival, there was shouting, arms waving, fingers point, veins popping. I worried someone would throw a punch and then we’d be sunk. There was no way of controlling an out-of-control crowd. It was utter chaos.

It was marvelous.

I gave Cephas a big hug and he promptly put me to work. He was working away, dressed like he’d been sent down by Central Casting in a fisherman’s hat and a photographer’s vest, all in khaki and tan. He was lugging a rather professional looking digital camera and yakking away on a camera phone. And he was running a beautiful show.

At first people argued about needing identification. What the heck for, I registered with you people yesterday! I’m a refugee, I don’t have identification! It wasn’t until we started saying, “But now you tell us you’re Jeff Smith, what about if you come back an hour from now and tell us you’re Dave Jones and vote again? And then come back two hours later and tell us you’re Thomas Sutherland and vote again?” That seemed to silence the arguments.

No one could understand Claire, who has a distinct English accent. “What zone do you live in?” was like Greek to the Liberians, who would respond with something that sounded like it came from the most southern tip of Alabama.

A man came along with a microphone and a loudspeaker. He spoke for a few minutes, but it was so tinny I have no idea what he was saying. No one else did either. Gabby worked the crowd, Claire and Semantics patiently explained the importance of identification and since I was stationed at the first point people would come to as they walked toward the polling station, I was giving the shpiel on what was going on. “We’re doing a mock election, a survey, if you will. It will have no impact on the results at home in Liberia. It doesn’t count for the official vote. But it does let the world know what the refugees think. If you want to participate, show your identification to those ladies down there and they’ll register you to vote. Then see these two at this table and they’ll give you a ballot. Visit this man and he’ll mark your thumb to show you voted, then go to the voting screen, mark your ballot for your candidate and then fold it up and put it here, in the ballot box.”

Through the course of the three hours I watched the voting, there were some pretty vigorous arguments, most in incomprehensible patois and at a deafening volume. Crowds had to be shooed away from the voting screens; pens to mark ballots disappeared within minutes of the polls opening. Some were confused about how to mark their choice, one woman wondered where she should write her name on the ballot, so her candidate would know she voted for him, and a few voters couldn't be dissuaded from shouting who they'd voted for as they dropped their ballot in the box.

There were 600 people pre-registered, but based on the number of people who popped up without any idea what was going on, we thought there were going to be many more “voting.” In the end, there were just 300 and they put their support solidly behind Weah.