Voting is underway in the Gogonyo constituency parliamentary by-election in Pallisa district despite the withdrawal of two candidates. Voting delayed to start at some polling stations because of faulty Biometric voter verification machines.
At Apopong Polling Station, only 3 out of the 400 registered voters had cast their ballot by 9:30am while at the neighboring Kapaala polling station only seven had voted.
At Cheele Polling Station in Oukot Parish where the National Resistance Movement-NRM party candidate, David Orone from voting started at 8:00am because of challenged with the Biometric voter verification machine.
At Kapaala polling Station, voting started at 7:45am while at Akumi Polling Station, voting didn’t start until 9:00am because of the faulty Biometric voter verification machine.
Alfred Alulya, the Presiding Officer of Akumi Polling station, said that they were waiting for a technician to fix the Biometric voter verification Machine.
He said despite the fact voters had turned up in time by 6:30am, they couldn’t start because of the faulty machine.
Lawrence Paade, the Presiding Officer of Gogonyo Primary School said that voting started at 7:40am because they had challenges with the BVVM machine. He said it took the intervention of the IT technician to fix the machine to allow the polling to kick off.
Gideon Oluka, a voter at Gogonyo Primary School, said many of them showed up at polling station early enough, but the Biometric voter verification machines failed to work, which delayed the exercise. He also revealed that the news of the withdrawal of some of the candidates demoralized several voters.
The Electoral Commission nominated three candidate for the Gogonyo constituency parliamentary by-election namely NRM’s David Orone, the National Unity Platform candidate, Joseph Okoboi and Isa Bantalib Taligoola, an independent.
Taligoola officially communicated to EC his withdrawal from the race. Okoboi announced his withdrawal from the race but didn’t notify the Commission through his party, which sponsored his candidature. As a result, the Commission decided to go on with the polls as planned.
