Electoral Board Rushes to Defend Vote Count Amid Delays, Disputed Videos

Jun 2 , 2026.

The national electoral board has dismissed two employees for procedural violations while counting continues in the Amhara, Somali, Gambella and Sidama regional states as well as Addis Abeba.

The disciplinary measure came as officials of the National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) moved from managing election-day logistics to defending the credibility of the count, with results still being tallied at polling stations and prepared for transfer to constituency aggregation centres. The Board's claim of a “mostly successful” general election is now entering its most delicate phase, as it confronts procedural breaches, logistical limitations, security-related interruptions and a wave of contested digital material circulating online.

Melatwerk Hailu, the country’s electoral czar, delivered a briefing today to a pool of journalists, at the Skylight Hotel on AfricaAvenue (BoleRoad).

The Board was still working through delays even as it sought to project institutional certainty over a final tally of voters. Melatwerk declared that 40 million people had voted, a precise final turnout that could not be confirmed until the verification process is complete.

The uncertainty over turnout comes at a moment when the procedural integrity of the election is being tested in public.

In the capital alone, more than 1,000 polling stations are still totalling results. The delay has been attributed to high candidate density, with up to 123 candidates appearing on multi-page ballots, a burden that extended the time each voter spent in booths and slowed voting and counting.

Standard ballot boxes filled prematurely in some polling stations, forcing the Board to rapidly deploy additional materials.

What began as a logistical bottlenecks became part of a wider test of the Board’s capacity to manage an unusually complex election process while maintaining public confidence in the chain of custody and the pace of tabulation.

Election day was also marked by several procedural escalations. NEBE’s monitoring teams intervened to remove unauthorised plainclothes administrative and security personnel found within voting compounds.

Reports also emerged that party observers had inappropriately used Board badges to obstruct journalists, an act Melatwerk has pledged to investigate. These incidents placed pressure on the Board to demonstrate that access, observation and media coverage were not being compromised by actors operating beyond their mandate.

The Board also invoked regulations to legally resume voting at stations where the process had been temporarily suspended because of security concerns. The decision allowed voting to continue where disruptions had occurred, but it also added another layer of legal scrutiny to an election already stretched by logistics, security interventions and contested public narratives.

The Board is now cross-referencing physical documents against digital “misinformation” and “fake” documents, some of which reportedly mimicked official Board stamps on social media. Starting from yesterday, several videos of election officials manipulating the vote have been seen on social medias. The authenticity of those videos remains a critical question for NEBE’s verification process, as the Board seeks to separate official records from materials circulating online.

Disciplinary measures followed. NEBE said two executives were terminated after being found to have acted outside their legal responsibilities.

The result is an election moving from the visible drama of polling day into a more technical but equally consequential phase. Ballots are being counted, documents are being checked, allegations are being reviewed and results are being prepared for constituency aggregation centres. Each step will shape whether NEBE’s description of the election as “mostly successful” withstands the pressures of delayed counts, contested documents and public suspicion.

Melatwerk faces a strict 10-day statutory window to announce provisional results. The final certification process will test the Board’s institutional capacity to verify valid ballots against registered voter data while managing the legal and security complexities of a high-stakes electoral cycle.

PUBLISHED ON Jun 02,2026 [ VOL 27 , NO 1362]