Maha Al-Azar
Daily Star staff

The impasse created by the controversial Metn by-election results may have ended due to the discovery of a duplication error in vote counts ­ in favor of opposition candidate Gabriel Murr, after earlier reports proclaimed pro-regime candidate Myrna Murr a winner.
But an examination of vote count reports has prompted legal experts to question why Gabriel Murr was not announced a winner from the start.
On Wednesday, Interior Minister Elias Murr announced his ministry had reviewed vote tabulation committee reports and found that one polling station’s results were recorded twice. Eliminating one would make Gabriel Murr the winner.
The Daily Star obtained from the Interior Ministry copies of all reports issued by the first-level tabulation committees and the Higher Vote Tabulation Committee, which verifies first-level committee reports and issues a final report with each candidate’s tally for the Interior Ministry. First-level tabulation committees examine documents and reports of ballots made by polling station heads, correcting any mistakes.
The Interior Ministry received three reports from the higher committee, prompting many to suggest that the committee was being pressured by the authorities.
“It is clear that there was interference and that the Interior Ministry was not neutral in the elections,” said Nisrin Mansour, executive director of the Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections (LADE).
The first report made Gabriel Murr the winner by including a previously eliminated ballot box in Hemlaya, pointing out that the entire box should not have been canceled because it contained one defective ballot. Instead, only the defective ballot ­ an extra empty envelope ­ should have been canceled.
As a result of the correction, Gabriel Murr earned an additional 149 votes and Myrna Murr 131, thus placing Gabriel Murr ahead by three votes.
The second report gave the option of announcing either candidate victorious based on two different calculations, one including the Hemlaya ballots and another excluding them; and a third report accepted the first-level tabulation committee’s report, the calculations of which placed Myrna Murr ahead of Gabriel Murr by 15 votes because the Hemlaya ballot box was eliminated.
Legal expert Edmond Naim said the ministry should have accepted the higher committee’s first report and announced Gabriel Murr’s victory.
Mansour agreed, adding that the Election Law stipulated that a higher committee’s report was final but could be challenged by the losing party before the Constitutional Council.
Naim invalidated Minister Murr’s claim that the higher committee’s only task was to verify calculations of the first-level committees.
Minister Murr argued during a news conference Wednesday that the higher committee had no authority to include the Hemlaya ballot box after the first-level committees excluded it.
“Of course the higher committee can look into legal violations as well as calculation mistakes,” Naim said.
“It is absolutely not feasible that a Higher Tabulation Committee which is composed of three judges would be simply tasked with secretarial work of counting and calculating,” said a former Constitutional Council member. “If the committee sees a mistake that needs redressing, of course it has the authority to do so.”
The duplication error discovered by the ministry was also considered a “political exit” out of the impasse by all candidates: winners and losers.
“It was not the Interior Ministry’s job to review the tabulations made by the various tabulation committees,” said a source close to Myrna Murr. “It’s the duty of the Higher Vote Tabulation Committee.”
“The Interior Ministry’s only task is to announce the results sent to it by the Higher Vote Tabulation Committee,” he added.
Naim disagreed: “If the interior minister had not redressed this blatant calculation error, he would have been committing a crime of falsification.”
“The higher committee has to fix this blatant calculation mistake and any others it might find,” he added, dismissing reports that the committee could choose not to incorporate the ministry’s corrections.
Gabriel Murr also alluded to political meddling in tabulation committee results, and sources close to third candidate Ghassan Mokheiber also considered the discovery of the duplication a “political exit,” insinuating that the error may have been created as a solution to the impasse.
A copy of the sheet containing the duplication error showed that the results for polling station 271 in Qaqour, near Baabdat, were recorded twice, once in the middle of the sheet and a second time as the last record on the sheet.
Interior Ministry director-general Atallah Ghasham reportedly spent a sleepless night with his team going over the tabulation results of some 345 polling stations. When asked how and at what time the error was discovered, a source close to the team said: “At the appropriate time.”
Although the Interior Ministry announced Wednesday it had discovered a duplication error in favor of Gabriel Murr, it has still not officially announced his victory.
A source close to the Higher Vote Tabulation Committee told The Daily Star on Friday that the reason for the delay was that the ministry had not sent the official vote count reports to the committee before Friday afternoon.

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