Controversy as man ‘disappears’ with a ballot box from a polling station

Dar es Salaam. Controversy has emerged at Idrisa Polling Station in Magomeni Ward after it was discovered that one of the ballot boxes had gone missing.

The Citizen paper visited the station where it witnessed heightened security and people were gathered in groups discussing the incident.

A voter, who asked not to be named in the newspaper, said he saw an unknown person running with a ballot box and that he brought it back a few minutes later.

“There was a car that came and pulled a few metres from where the police are now. The said person rushed out of this car to the polling station and came back with a ballot box,” he claimed.

According to him, the voters raised alarm over the matter; some gave a chase and returned with the suspect carrying the box.

“We think that he may have gone to stuff the box with fake votes, and later pretend that the box had been recovered,” he theorized.

However, the electoral supervisor at the station dismissed the claims insisting that nothing of that sort had happened at the polling point.

“Nobody has taken the ballot box from the station. The exercise is going on smoothly and peacefully,” she said, declining to give her name.