Grey day...

We had rain again last night...well, a sprinkle. And while it is March and it is time for the rains, there is also a very nice coincidence with the election and a good omen-ness about the rain. I am still not sure if this is Biblical but we save that for another day.

OK...people are getting impatient! 36 hours into the vote counting and we have only 42% of the votes counted. Now, when we consider that we had 14m registered voters and 70% are estimated to have voted, we see that we are dealing with a HUGE bunch of data. We are also dealing with a new voting system (using bio metric data to confirm the voter) and voting in a new form of government. I think we are doing rather well.

And what will really change if we know now or in 48 hours? The IEBC has 7 days to give us the results. I wish people would simply get to work and we wait. But no, people need to go onto Facebook and start whining about the delay and people in the gym start making racist comments about certain tribes not giving up easily or conceding quickly to defeat [and he was WHITE]. And I feel this need to defend the IEBC and to pull people up short when they utter stupid statements [so don't even try].

The sticking point now is rather large number of spoiled [spoilt?] votes. We are finding that nearly 6% of the votes are spoiled. And the spoiling can come from numerous areas - wrong colour ballot in the wrong colour box [yes, six boxes, six votes and six colours], the corner of a ballot could be sticking out of the box and that would be declared spoiled, putting a tick instead of a cross...or is it a cross instead of a tick? The list goes on but I am sure these rules were put here because there were numerous ways to rig elections in the past so now we have gone hyper-cautious on spoiled votes. At any rate, it gives the masses just 'masses' to talk about and with which to speculate.

I was told to go home early today...avoid being caught out when the final results are announced. There is not as much 'noise' or 'chatter' as there was a few years ago about people preparing for battle or tribal leaflets being passed around. We are certainly in a better place...but I can say that from my safe middle-class(?) perspective.

Enough...I shall try to keep you posted but BBC is much better at this than I. So enjoy this faded flower which has gone to seed. I think it is great fun and the back yard of this office continues to provide thousands of interesting shots.

Have a peaceful day