Machines to speed up counting of votes in Oman's municipal elections

Muscat: A new state-of-the-art machine will be used for the first time in Oman’s municipal council elections to count votes.

“The new technology will help save time once the voting is over. We typically finish counting of the votes by 3 am but with this new technology, we will be able to finish before midnight as the machine will automatically count the votes,” a source at the Ministry of Interior said.

This machine will be available at all the election locations and a voter will have to insert the paper with a tick marked next to his candidate’s name.

The results will be announced on the election day itself.

The number of registered voters this year stood at 623,224, recording a whopping increase of around 100,000 from last elections. The official announced that Omanis living in the GCC will be able to vote through their embassies on December 18, while the official election day is December 25 for the rest of the voters.

Voters will get a day off on Sunday, December 25.

Around 731 candidates will contest for 202 seats all across Oman, of whom 708 are males and only 22 females. The final results will be revealed and calculated live via the election website and the mobile app.

The ministry has allocated 107 election centres across the Sultanate. The municipal councils’ term is four years. The electoral process strengthens the national development efforts being made by the government and plays a vital role in the efforts made by the Council of Oman.

The Interior Ministry has also issued leaflets with detailed step-by-step instructions regarding the electronic voting system.

This was revealed on Tuesday during the ministry’s meeting with the press.