Ballot boxes under blockade

The AKP, aiming to render the HDP ineffective in the region by moving ballot boxes, giving wider powers to the police in elections and selecting ballot box committee chairs from among public servants, is mooting a single envelope to prevent the casting of invalid votes.
 
 
Emine Kaplan
 
The AKP, perceiving the 2019 elections to be a matter of life or death, has made all arrangements in the harmonisation package such that they favour its planned alliance with the MHP so as both to win the presidential election and to attain a parliamentary majority in the election for MPs. The AKP, setting its sights on bringing ballot boxes fully under its control through arrangements whereby the police can approach as far as the door at places where ballot boxes are set up, ballot boxes can be moved on security grounds and ballot box committee chairs are selected from among public servants, is aiming through these means to render the HDP ineffective in the region. Given the possibility that the HDP will field independent candidates out of threshold concerns, the plan is to prevent voters from voting as a block by dispersing those living in the same building among different ballot boxes.
 
With MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli’s “thump thump” proposal involving placing presidential and parliamentary ballot slips in a single envelope being partially acceded to, the aim is thereby to prevent voters from becoming confused and casting invalid votes.
 
The AKP has taken all measures to win the election through the harmonisation package that it has submitted to the Parliamentary Speaker’s Office co-signed by the MHP and is slated to be debated in the Constitutional Commission next week. Some noteworthy arrangements in the package are as follow:
 
Ballot boxes under police supervision: The law enforcement forces have been enabled to approach as far as the door of areas in which ballot boxes are set up. Voters will hence be overshadowed by the police as they go to the ballot box and vote. Since it has also been made possible for them to be called into the ballot box surroundings by voters citing threat, law enforcement forces may remain by ballot boxes for the duration of vote, especially in the East and South-East.
 
Ballot box chairs from the public sector: According to the existing law, ballot box committee chairs are selected by the drawing of lots from among candidates proposed by the Supreme Election Council and the four parties that obtain the highest vote in that sub-province. In the 1 November elections, with candidates proposed by the HDP drawing the winning lot and becoming ballot box committee chairs, provincial and sub-provincial election councils rejected HDP and CHP ballot box committee chairs. So that the AKP and MHP can prevent CHP and HDP members from becoming ballot box committee chairs, chairs will be appointed from among public servants by sub-provincial election council chairs. Ballot box committee chairs are vested with considerable authority from measures to be taken in the ballot box surroundings to the taking of bags containing ballot slips to the sub-provincial election council.
 
Ballot boxes may be moved
 
Moving ballot boxes and dispersal of voters: On security grounds, just as ballot boxes may be moved to another ballot box zone, voters living in the same building may be registered at different ballot boxes in the same voting region. The statutory provision whereby the number of voters per ballot box is 150 in villages and towns and 200 in cities has been repealed and authority to determine the number of voters who may vote at ballot boxes has been granted to the Supreme Election Council. It is noted that the aim of such arrangements is to prevent the HDP from controlling its own voters and, especially if a decision is made to contest the election with independent candidates, acting as a block.
 
Non-attending ballot box committee members: In the harmonisation package, amendment is being made to the provision whereby persons who are literate and entitled to vote and are present in the ballot box area can be appointed by ballot box committee chairs in place of those who do not attend while voting is going on despite being ballot box committee members. Accordingly, the ballot box committee chair can appoint members from the voting region. By means of this arrangement, the business of appointing members in place of those who do not attend despite being ballot box committee members is made easier, especially in the region.
 
The number of AKP and MHP MPs will increase through alliance: The “D’Hondt method” (proportional representation) will continue to be used in distributing seats among parties. Since votes for parties that form alliances will be counted as the total vote for the alliance, alliance parties will have more MPs than they would if they contested the election separately.
 
“Thump thump” gesture to Bahçeli over a single envelope
 
* The provision on the placing in the same envelope of the presidential election ballot slip and the parliamentary election ballot slip was apparently added to the package as a gesture to MHP General Chair Devlet Bahçeli, who had previously proposed the system characterising it with the expression “thump thump”. Bahçeli had described the exercising of the two votes as, “Thump first for the alliance and then thump for the party.” The “thump thump” formula will come into being as far as AKP and MHP voters go, who will vote for the alliance and Tayyip Erdoğan’s presidential candidacy by placing the two ballot slips in the same envelope. A further aim of this arrangement is indicated to be preventing voters from becoming confused and casting invalid votes by voting in different columns that would come from placing two separate ballot slips in two separate envelopes.