ISLAMABAD, October 22, 2018: A perplexing drop in voters’ turnout characterizes an otherwise well-managed by-elections held in one national and two provincial assembly constituencies on October 21, 2018, warranting an urgent attention of political parties to address the dwindling public interest in the electoral process, which remained high only three months ago during the General Elections (GE) 2018.
Procedural irregularities such as restrictions on polling agents were observed to have increased during these by-elections, more on Karachi seats (NA-247 Karachi South-II and PS-111 Karachi South-V) than on Peshawar seat (PK-71 Peshawar VI), wherein 15 percent of observed polling stations, polling agents were seated at a place where they could not observe the polling process. In addition, the by-elections also recorded an increase in the number of ballots excluded from the count at the polling stations. Read more
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