Ballot counting for the 2025 Bougainville general election started on 12 September Photo: Office of the Bougainville Electoral Commissioner - OBEC
Bougainville's electoral commissioner says his team will know by Saturday afternoon if they need to extend the return of writs date.
The writs should be returned to the Speaker of the Bougainville House of Representatives by 22 September.
Locals went to the polls on 5 September, with voting extended through to 6 September to ensure all eligible voters had the opportunity to cast their ballots.
Ballot counting for the 2025 Bougainville general election started on 12 September.
Electoral commissioner Desmond Tsianai told RNZ Pacific analysis is being done as we get data from the count centres.
"We are doing our analysis for the modelling of our time frame and by this afternoon [Saturday], around 3pm local time, we should have some data to help us decide whether the teams across the three regions will complete counting before or by 22 September.
"He said we should have this afternoon [Saturday] data from south, central and north count centres, and that would help us to model our timeframe on how many extra days we would need in order to complete counting."
Ballot counting will continue over the weekend.
Counting update
Tsianai said that counting so far for the north Bougainville constituencies was probably about 30 to 40 percent completed.
He said they were doing the counting for the single-member constituencies, and the two regional seats for women and ex-combatants simultaneously.
"For the single-member constituencies, we have almost passed 50 percent of the seats counted. For the south, we have gone past the last remaining three constituencies there, and then they will start counting the regional seats for women and ex-combatants."
"And of course, the presidential [ballot] is still doing the first preference count. After doing that, they will go back to the quality checks and then start with the elimination."
There are more than 239,000 registered voters in the autonomous Papua New Guinea region, where independence remains a key issue.
When asked if he had noticed or heard of any issues during counting, he said: "We've encountered normal issues, like scrutineers requesting for recounts because probably their tallies are not matching up with our results. So, we have done rechecks, quality checks, just to make sure the results are speaking together."
Tsianai said since they started counting, there had not been any major incidents as counting had generally been smooth and peaceful, and observers and scrutineers were there, observing the entire process.
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