The President of the Gambia is elected in a single round by first-past-the-post voting for a five-year term.[4] Registered voters receive a voter's card which must be presented at the assigned polling station. After verifying eligibility, a polling officer marks the voter's left forefinger with indelible ink.[5]
Instead of using paper ballots, elections in the Gambia are conducted using marbles. Each voter receives a marble and places it in a tube on top of a sealed drum that corresponds to that voter's favoured candidate. The drums for different candidates are painted in different colours corresponding to the party affiliation of the candidate, and a picture of the candidate is affixed to their corresponding drum. The drums are placed in the booth concealed from the officials to preserve ballot secrecy; the insertion of a marble rings a bell inside to signal that the vote has been cast.[6][5]
During the tallying process, a candidate's drum is unsealed and its contents emptied in batches on hole boards with a capacity of 200 to 500 marbles each. Once the tellers agree on the number of marbles, the drum is refilled and retained for use in a recount, and the tellers pass to the next candidate's urn. This process, repeated in each polling station, is very fast; the results are generally known at the national level the day after the vote.[7]
The system has the advantages of low cost and simplicity, both for understanding how to vote and for counting the results. The method is reported to have an extremely low error rate for miscast ballots.[6]
