Election commissioner in Darfur confirms use of fake seals

The High Election Commissioner in West Darfur, Adam Ahmed Al Tahir, has confirmed the use of false seals for ballot boxes. In many places there seals without serial numbers used. That is surprising since the boxes and seals were centrally procured for all states in Sudan.

This raised the possibility of the existence of fake seals being used in Darfur, adding to suspicion that in Darfur large-scale vote rigging took place. The fake seals were already discovered on the first day, Adam Ahmed Altahir confirmed. “We took some boxes apart which had fake seals. We think it might have been a mistake,” he said. But he didn’t want to quantify the number of boxes detected with fake seals and details about where the votes in the boxes will end up. According to a local political party observer in El Geneina, it seems many boxes were supplied with fake seals and not all were replaced. The fake seals have only appeared in the three states of Darfur, as far as is known.