Long and sometimes unruly queues are a problem at many polling stations, especially early in the morning of voting day. Some small changes set out in the manual for polling station staff (MMVs, membros de mesa de voto) could make queuing and voting run more smoothly.
The two main changes are that two MMVs, the third and fourth scrutineers, are assigned to be permanently outside the polling station managing the queue, and are given a copy of the register book (caderno).
First they sort the queue and move to a separate queue the people who vote first: the ill, pregnant women, the elderly, people with disabilities, and electoral staff.
The electoral register of up to 800 voters is in alphabetical order by first name, so the next step for each voter is to find where they are in the register and tell them their order number. Thus, when the voter goes inside the polling station, they tell the polling station staff their number in the register, speeding up the voting process.
The third task is to watch the polling station staff and admit people one at a time as soon as the previous voter has been given their ballot papers.
The process should make voting faster and move more smoothly.
The only issue is that the third and fourth scrutineers are often the MMVs appointed by Renamo and MDM, who will be outside the polling station rather than inside at the main table watching their colleagues.
The manual is posted on https://www.cipeleicoes.org/documentos/ and these instructions are on page 13.
