Monday, April 2, 2007

Egypt Blogs Show Alleging Ballot Stuffing Footage

Via scotsman.com -

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian blogs have published amateur video footage purporting to show ballot stuffing and vote fraud in a nationwide referendum on constitutional amendments which opposition groups say was rigged.

Egypt says it won 76 percent approval in Monday's vote for the amendments, which give the state powerful tools that could be used to drive opposition Islamists from politics. Rights groups say the changes are a step backward for freedom.

A handful of video clips, most of which appear to be taken by mobile phone cameras and circulated on Egyptian blogs and Web sites, contain some of the first images of alleged fraud in the vote and could reinforce the accusations of vote fixing.

Egypt says turnout in the referendum was 27 percent. But all main opposition groups boycotted the vote and rights groups said the real turnout was much lower. The independent Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights estimated that just 5 percent of registered voters took part.

In one of three clips viewed by Reuters, a man purported to be an election official in the Nile Delta appears to mark names on a voter list, then folds a pile of ballots and stuffs them into a transparent vote box. A close-up of one of the ballots shows it is marked with a "Yes" vote.

Another grainy video shows a man marking piles of blank ballots with "Yes" votes. In a third clip, which appears to be taken from a distance with a zoom lens, workers at a school are seen shuffling through ballots and folding them, while another person collects them and takes them out of sight of the camera.

"The overwhelming amount of evidence points in the direction of fraud. I doubt anyone needed to doctor or make up evidence," said Ghada Shahbender of the civil monitoring group Shayfeencom, which means "We are Watching You" in Arabic.

"At least some of them are valid. Some of them are very simple. They are not doctored. They are not edited," she added.

Justice Ministry officials declined immediate comment.

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