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Presidential race photo-finishes that nearly led to a preference count
View(s):By Kevin De Alwis
In the event a requirement comes to count preference votes, it will take only about three hours for Election Commission officials to finalise the result.
If the EC is faced with such an eventuality, it will announce the results at the district level, not the electoral level. However, the accumulative results contain the preference votes of the top two candidates.
According to the Presidential Election Act No. 1 of 1981, the preference vote is counted if no candidate obtains more than 50 percent plus one vote of the valid votes. The second and third preferences of the candidates, excluding the top two candidates, will be taken into account.
The Election Commission’s former chairman, Mahinda Deshapriya, says there is a possibility that the second and third preferences may have to be counted in this election since there are more than three leading candidates in the fray.
In the history of presidential elections in Sri Lanka from 1982 up to the last presidential election in 2019, preferential votes were not counted, but there were a few close instances.
The closest election that almost went for a preferential vote was the 2005 presidential election. The frontline candidates Mahinda Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremesinghe batted out a close battle for the presidency, and subsequently, Mr. Rajapaksa came out triumphant with 4,887,152 with a percentage of 50.29 percent, and Ranil Wickremesinghe gave a close fight, polling 4,706,366 votes, or 48.43 percent of the valid votes.
The 1988 presidential election was another close election where the winner, Ranasinghe Premadasa of the United National Party, recorded a close victory, polling 50.43 of the valid votes. He secured 2,569,199 votes while his main opponent, Sirimavo Bandaranaike of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, got 2,289,860 votes, or 44.95 of the votes.
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