Maha Al-Azar
Daily Star staff

Legal experts concurred Monday that a defective ballot could not result in the annulment of an entire ballot box, merely the elimination of that vote.
Lawyer Bassem Jisr, a member of the Democratic Renewal Gathering was categorical about vote counting.
“Of course you don’t cancel an entire ballot box because of one defective ballot,” he said. “You only cancel that ballot.”
Otherwise, Jisr argued, every time a candidate wished to “rob” an opponent of votes, he would make sure that one voter would fail to sign the voter list.
In the Metn poll, it would have taken only 345 out of 155,155 voters to cast defective votes in the corresponding polling stations to cause the cancellation of the election.
Opposition politician and former Communist Party leader George Hawi argued that a voter had failed to sign the voter list in a Bteghrin polling station, where Myrna Murr enjoys strong support, “but they didn’t cancel the entire ballot box” where the defective vote was cast.
The controversy arose when the Vote Tabulation Committee canceled an entire ballot box from Hemlaya, because one voter had failed to sign the list.
The Hemlaya ballot box contained 272 votes which amounted to 121 votes for Myrna Murr, 149 for Gabriel Murr and two for Ghassan Mokheiber. This placed Gabriel Murr ahead of Myrna Murr by three votes.
However, if the Hamlaya counts were excluded, Myrna Murr would have beaten Gabriel Murr by 25 votes.
But Metn MP Nassib Lahoud announced Gabriel Murr’s victory at around 4am Monday morning, saying that the Higher Tabulation Committee’s president, Elias Bou Nassif, had announced the total vote counts for Gabriel Murr and Myrna Murr, including the Hemlaya ballots, with 34,894 votes for Gabriel Murr and 34,891 votes for Myrna Murr.
Bou-Nassif could not be reached for comment Monday.
The committee’s verdict overrides that of the Vote  Tabulation Committee, both of which are responsible for verifying the count.
But former members of the Constitutional Council as well as legal experts dismissed the logic that would lead to canceling the contents of an entire ballot box due to a defective ballot.
“The matter does not call for canceling the entire ballot box at all .... but for eliminating this vote,” Hassan Rifaii, a legal expert and former minister, told the National News Agency.

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