Mauritius: Voting stations

Extracted from: Rouikaya Kasenally 2009 "Chapter 8: Mauritius" IN Denis Kadima and Susan Booysen (eds) Compendium of Elections in Southern Africa 1989-2009: 20 Years of Multiparty Democracy, EISA, Johannesburg, 293-294.

The criteria which are used in locating voting stations include accessibility to electors, size of voting population, security, availability and suitability of public buildings, especially schools. All care is taken to facilitate access of electors to voting stations and reduce undue hardship on them, especially women, elderly people and physically-handicapped people. The police are called upon to provide appropriate manpower for the maintenance of law and order at each voting station. In most cases the voting stations are big enough to accommodate the volume of voters. But with the increase in the voting population, additional voting stations may have to be identified in the future or additional voting 'compartments' may have to be constructed.

A central counting station (which is also a polling station) is identified for each constituency, taking into consideration such criteria as security, access, nearness to the other polling stations of the constituency, and the availability of a sufficient number of rooms to accommodate the ballot boxes and the electoral staff and for counting purposes.

In addition to the security arrangements already made for polling, stricter security measures are enforced at the counting station for the safekeeping of sealed ballot boxes containing ballot papers on the night of poll, and for counting purposes.