Africa-Press – Liberia. The National Elections Commission (NEC) has announced that, in accordance with the Commission’s operational plan, ballot papers for the November 14, 2023 Presidential Runoff Election have arrived in the country.According to the NEC, 3,320,500 ballot papers were received in the country on Tuesday, October 31, 2023, from the Republic of Ghana on a chartered Ethiopian Cargo flight via the Roberts International Airport. The ballots were accompanied by other electoral materials, including Record of the Count Forms, Mock Ballots, and Tactile Ballot Guides. These ballots are currently stored securely under the protection of state security. The deployment of ballot papers and other sensitive and non-sensitive election materials to the 19 magisterial offices in the 15 counties, for onward distribution to the 2,080 voting precincts nationwide, will commence in the next few days.
“The 3,320,500 ballot papers arrived in the country on Tuesday, October 31, 2023, from the Republic of Ghana on a chartered Ethiopian Cargo flight via the Roberts International Airport. The ballots were accompanied by other electoral materials, including Record of the Count Forms, Mock Ballots, and Tactile Ballot Guides.”
In October, the National Elections Commission (NEC) declared the campaign open for the run-off election between former Vice President Joseph Boakai and the Incumbent George Weah of the Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC).
Liberia’s electoral commission scheduled a presidential election run-off for November after results showed that the two frontrunners, President George Weah and opposition leader Joseph Boakai, had failed to secure enough votes. Weah holds a slim lead at 43.83% of the vote, while Boakai has 43.44%, according to tallied results from 100% of polling places, as reported by the West African nation’s election commission.
Commission Chairperson Davidetta Browne Lansanah announced that the run-off vote would be held on November 14. She also mentioned that there was a record turnout of 78.86% among around 2.4 million registered voters.
The October 10 election has been widely seen as a test of support for former soccer star Weah, who is 57 years old. He was criticized in his first term by the opposition and Liberia’s international partners for not doing enough to tackle corruption. On his campaign trail, he asked voters for more time to fulfill his promise to rebuild the nation’s broken economy, institutions, and infrastructure, pledging to pave more roads if reelected.
Liberia is struggling to recover from two civil wars that killed more than 250,000 people between 1989 and 2003, as well as from a 2013-16 Ebola epidemic that killed thousands.
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