Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Many voided ballots and questions raised by poll watchers, delayed the counting at the Nu’uuli polling station once the polls closed at 6p.m on Nov. 3rd — Election Day, says deputy election officer, Fiti Tavai, based on information from the polling station’s supervisor.

Since election night there have been questions raised with Samoa News as to why it took so long for the Election Office to get Nu’uuli polling station results, which delayed the final unofficial tally released before 1:30a.m on Wednesday, Nov. 4th.

After 9p.m on Election night, all polling stations — except for the Nu’uuli location — had transmitted results to the Election Office in Tafuna. And KVZK-TV broadcasted after 10p.m results from remaining polling stations.

However, it wasn’t until around 1:15a.m, Nov. 4th that KVZK-TV finally announced the results of the Nu’uuli polling station as well as the overall “unofficial” results for the gubernatorial and congressional races.

With such a long delay from the Election Office, the headquarters for Lemanu and Talauega in Matu’u moved forward with their prayers and closing around 11:30p.m, Nov. 3rd, as the campaign center already knew — based on results from their poll watchers at other polling stations — that Lemanu and Talauega had won with no-run off election needed.

“According to the [election] supervisor, there were too many voided ballots — 43 in total — and questions raised by poll watchers delaying the counting,” said Tavai responding to Samoa News questions as to the cause of the delay in getting results from the Nu’uuli polling stations.

He explained that Nu’uuli's voter registration total is 1,599; and that Nu’uuli and as evidenced from previous elections, Leone polling stations are always the last to get results.

The Election Office didn’t provide an explanation behind the voided ballots and poll watchers at other polling stations told Samoa News that there were also voided ballots in their stations, and they raised questions.

Samoa News points out that in previous elections there were few reasons for voided ballots — for example, placing the “X” outside of the circle next to the candidate’s name, or not clearly marking the X next to the candidate’s name.

Results of the 2020 general election will become official at 4:30p.m today, Nov. 10th.

Meanwhile, the Election Office says there’s no change to the total number of local and overseas absentee ballots cast in general election.

And this means there were no other absentee ballots received in the mail on Election Day after the ballot boxes were delivered to the polling stations before 5:30a.m.

The data remains the same — as reported by Samoa News last week Wednesday —  overall total absentee ballots cast stand at 1,601 — with 892 from overseas absentee including those stranded off island or COVID-19 absentee; and 709 ballots for local absentee.