Fraud was so brazen that it was carried out in full view of observers, the civil society observer group Mais Integridade reported this morning (16 October). Ballot box stuffing, long delays to start the counting, and invalidating opposition votes were done openly. And where staff wanted to hide their actions, observers and party delegates were thrown out of the polling stations. https://bit.ly/Moz-El-MI

The revised electoral law allows staff an hour break between voting and counting, but many polling stations did not start the count for 4 hours or more. "The main reason for the violation of this legal provision is related to the fact that Presiding Officers were instructed by the local STAE not to start tabulation before receiving authorisation to start counting," Mais Integridade reported. This was largely to delay the writing up of results sheet until the early morning, when results could be changed and sleeping party delegates would not notice.

Mais Integriade noted ballot box stuffing but also during the count seeing invalid or Mondlane votes given to Frelimo; this also happened with the ticks on the blackboard used to keep count. And in a number of polling stations staff were caught invalidating votes for Podemos or Renamo by adding an extra ink mark. And observers and even polling station presidents used their right to a "special vote" to vote more than once.

Mais Integridade also did analysis of the results, finding 12 of 110 districts with very high turnout (over 80%) and a very high vote for Frelimo's Daniel Chapo (over 80%). Finally there were unexplained differences between the number voting for president and parliament, in two cases of 55,000 votes. Yet no one reported seeing someone put a vote in one ballot box and not the other. Instead, one ballot box was stuffed and not the other.