A Queue at Dawn: How an Election Is Run in Rwanda

1Before you read

1. Where is the nearest polling station to your home? What kind of building is it on an ordinary day?
2. List three things you think must be ready before anyone can vote.
3. Why do you think nobody is allowed to see how another person votes?

2Reading: A Queue at Dawn

A feature article. Ishimwe is an imagined voter; the procedure she follows is the one published by Rwanda's National Electoral Commission.

1 Long before the sun has cleared the hills, a queue has formed outside the primary school in Ishimwe's sector. Today its classrooms are not teaching arithmetic: each one has become a polling station, and the doors open at seven. Ishimwe, who turned eighteen three months ago, is about to vote for the first time. She has her national identity card in her pocket and, she admits, a faint feeling that the whole country is watching her. In one sense it is. An election is the moment when millions of private decisions are added together to produce a single public one.

2 None of this happens by accident. Elections and referendums in Rwanda are organised by the National Electoral Commission, an independent institution recognised by the Constitution. Months before voting day, the Commission runs civic and voter education, trains the people who will staff every polling station and, above all, prepares the voters' register.

3 The register is the foundation on which everything else rests. Any Rwandan who is eighteen, or who will be eighteen by polling day, may register in the village where he or she lives; the law excludes only a few groups, such as prisoners. But the right to vote can be exercised only by a person whose name is actually on the register. Some weeks before the poll, the provisional register is displayed in public places, so that citizens can check their details, point out mistakes and ask to be added, or to be transferred if they have moved. The final register follows at least fifteen days before polling day. Ishimwe checked her name weeks ago. Her cousin, who had moved to Kigali for work, asked for a transfer to a polling station near his new home, and did so before the deadline.

4 Candidates, too, must satisfy conditions laid down by law. They submit their applications to the Commission, which examines them and publishes the list of those accepted. Only then does the official campaign open. For a period fixed in advance, candidates present their programmes through speeches, photographs, written materials and technology, and they are bound by the Commission's rules on how and where they may campaign. A campaign is, in effect, a long job interview conducted in public.

5 Inside the classroom, the procedure is simple but strict. A polling officer finds Ishimwe's name in the register and compares it with her identity card. She is handed a ballot paper and goes alone behind a screen. There she presses an inked fingertip beside the candidate she has chosen, folds the paper and drops it into a transparent ballot box, in full view of the officials. Everyone can see that she has voted; nobody can see how. That secrecy is deliberate. It protects every voter, whether a minister or a moto driver, from pressure, persuasion and fear.

6 When the poll closes at three in the afternoon, the count begins at once, in the same room and in public. Members of the public, accredited observers and the candidates or their agents may watch as the poll clerks unfold each ballot and read out its choice. The figures are written into an official statement, sealed in a stamped envelope and passed up through the sector and the district to the Commission, which announces the results first on a provisional basis and then, within days, on a final one.

7 Walking home with a faint stain on her fingertip, Ishimwe reflects that the right she has just used carries a duty with it. A single vote is private, but it is never trivial. The care taken over the register, the number of citizens who turn out and the calm of polling day are, taken together, a measure of how seriously a nation treats its own affairs.

3The timetable behind polling day

The article mentions several deadlines. The timeline puts them in order; the deadlines follow the Commission's published procedure.

4Comprehension

Answer in full sentences. Questions 1 to 5 test what the text says; 6 to 8 test what it means; 9 asks what you think.

1. What has happened to the classrooms of the primary school, and why? (paragraph 1)
2. Name three things the National Electoral Commission does months before voting day.
3. Uwera will turn eighteen two days before polling day. According to the article, may she register? Explain.
4. Why is the provisional list displayed in public?
5. Who may watch the count?
6. In paragraph 1, "In one sense it is." What does it refer to, and in what sense is the writer's statement true?
7. The ballot box is transparent, yet the vote is secret. Explain how the article shows that these two facts do not contradict each other.
8. Why does the writer mention "a minister or a moto driver" in paragraph 5?
9. The writer claims that a single vote is "never trivial". Using the text, give two reasons that support this claim, then say whether you find it convincing.

Show answersHide answers

1. Each classroom has become a polling station, because it is election day.
2. It runs civic and voter education, trains the staff of every polling station and prepares the voters' register.
3. Yes. A Rwandan who will be eighteen by polling day may register in the village where she lives.
4. So that citizens can check their details, point out mistakes, and ask to be added or transferred before the final register is published.
5. Members of the public, accredited observers, and the candidates or their agents.
6. It refers to "the whole country". It is true because the result of the election is the sum of every voter's choice, so each voter really does matter to the whole nation.
7. The transparent box lets everyone see that a folded paper went in, so nobody can add or remove papers unseen; the screen and the folded paper mean nobody sees how the person voted. One protects the count, the other protects the voter.
8. The two are at opposite ends of society. The contrast shows that secrecy protects every voter equally, however powerful or ordinary.
9. Reasons from the text: every vote is added to produce the public decision (paragraph 1); turnout and the calm of polling day measure how seriously a nation takes its affairs (paragraph 7). Your judgement must be supported, for example: "Convincing, because a result is only a total of single votes, although one vote rarely decides a national election on its own."

5Vocabulary in context

Many words in the article have an everyday meaning and an electoral one. Use the sentence to decide which is meant.