Volunteers to be recruited for General Election

By Soli Wilson 29 October 2020, 1:00PM

The Office of the Electoral Commission will recruit over 600 volunteers to supervise close to 300 polling booths in the 2021 General Election.

Electoral Commissioner, Faimalomatumua Mathew Lemisio, said a large number of volunteers have to be recruited in order to avoid what happened in the previous general election, where some of them failed to turn up on the day, even after they underwent training funded by the office. 

He said recruiting a large group of volunteers will ensure there are extra people on standby to step in at polling booths, should the assigned officers not turn up.

Faimalo said the failure of volunteers to turn up at the respective polling booths has had an impact on the overall electoral process before.

The General Election is now five months and a week away, added the Electoral Commissioner.

Candidates have less than two days to file a petition to challenge the decision of the Electoral Commission. 

The deadline is this Friday, October 30, 2020.

Under the Electoral Act 2019, section 47(3), a candidate or a person who claims a right to be a candidate may by motion challenge the decision of the Commissioner to accept or reject the nomination of a candidate under this section in the Supreme Court, for an order to qualify or disqualify a candidate.

Challenges must be decided by the Court within 20 working days after the filing of the motion.

This Friday is also the deadline for the transfer of Spouses and Children of Candidates. Currently, a total of 200 candidates have been nominated for the upcoming election.

The ruling Human Rights Protection Party (H.R.P.P.) has the most nominated candidates of 114, followed by the Fa’atuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (F.A.S.T.) party with 50, Independent candidates 15, Tautua Samoa Party 14, Samoa First Political Party (S.F.P.P.) 6 and one from the Sovereign Independent Samoa (S.I.S.).

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HRPP
Politics
By Soli Wilson 29 October 2020, 1:00PM
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