The republic of uganda in the supreme court of uganda at kampala

Effect of irregular voting:

It was proved to my satisfaction that an unascertained number of ballot papers were illegally cast as votes for 1St Respondent. Undoubtedly those ballots must have been counted among the total number of votes he obtained. To that extent they affected the result in the sense that the 1St Respondent obtained more votes than he would have obtained if those ballot papers had not been illegally cast in his favour. However, the Petitioner did not attempt to prove how many of such votes were included in the 1st Respondent’s total. He did not even adduce credible evidence from which the Court could infer that the illegal voting was so excessive and/or widespread that it must have affected the result in a substantial manner. I noted from the admissible and credible affidavit evidence concerning irregularities of stuffing of ballot boxes, multiple voting, pre-ticking and open voting, that the number of affected polling stations were 12 in Rukungiri, 6 in Ntungamo, 3 in Kabale, 2 in Sembabule, 2 in Soroti, and 1 each in Busia, Mayuge, Mbarara and Tororo Districts. The witnesses were not able to tell with any precision the numbers of ballot papers which they saw being cast illegally. Some of the witnesses attempted to estimate, but I did not think it was safe to place much reliance on those estimates, as only a few were shown to have been made with any deliberate effort to be accurate. The number of polling stations, i.e. about 30 (if I include the attempt at Bunyaruguru), in about 10 districts, is significant enough to warrant mention. It showed that the irregularities in voting which I have described were not accidental or isolated incidents. It showed that there were electoral officials and other operatives who had little regard, if any, for the democratic principles governing elections, and who were prepared to pervert the will of the electorate through those irregularities. Nevertheless 30 polling stations is a very small fraction of 17,308 polling stations nationwide. The number of illegal votes cast and counted in favour of the 1st Respondent in those polling stations was not indicated, but cannot have exceeded the maximum possible in a polling station.