A logistics lesson for INEC from America’s midterm elections, By Adeola Akinremi

A word of caution. In Nigeria, the involvement of security agencies in handling election materials will always raise questions of neutrality, and rightly so. The American examples must not be read as an argument for giving security agencies more power over elections. In Los Angeles, the Sheriff moves the ballots; he does not count them. In Nigeria, INEC officials must remain responsible for materials throughout. Security personnel must protect without taking independent custody. Party agents and accredited observers should be able to witness the relevant handovers.

A word of caution. In Nigeria, the involvement of security agencies in handling election materials will always raise questions of neutrality, and rightly so. The American examples must not be read as an argument for giving security agencies more power over elections. In Los Angeles, the Sheriff moves the ballots; he does not count them. In Nigeria, INEC officials must remain responsible for materials throughout. Security personnel must protect without taking independent custody. Party agents and accredited observers should be able to witness the relevant handovers.

I saw the FEDECO elections firsthand, and what I remember most is the endless waiting by voters at the polling stations. Voters waited. Officials waited. Whole communities waited for election materials that were always on their way and never seemed to arrive. The frustration was real, and it had little to do with politics. It was about logistics.

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More than four decades later, Nigeria has repeatedly rebranded its electoral management institution – from FEC to FEDECO, NEC, NECON and eventually INEC. Yet, despite the changes in names, structures and administrations, the underlying problems of electoral credibility, transparency and integrity remain stubbornly persistent. The name has changed; the problem has not.

Today, Nigeria is a far larger country. It has more than 176,000 polling units, and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it plans to deploy about 1.4 million ad hoc staff for the next general election. Yet the old complaint has outlived the old commission. Election materials still arrive late in too many places, and every late arrival raises the same uncomfortable question: whose vote was lost to the clock?

To his credit, the INEC chairman, Professor Joash Amupitan, has said as much. In October, he inaugurated an Electoral Logistics Committee for the 2027 elections and declared that no Nigerian should be disenfranchised because materials came late. He has also argued that an election is only as strong as its logistics. With the polls less than three months away, the commission has time to answer one more serious question. It is the one I want to put this week.

How can an election management body guarantee that every vote is collected, protected, transported and counted on time, regardless of how remote or difficult the community is to reach?

That is the burning question on my mind for this edition. Riverine communities in the Niger Delta, island settlements, rural roads that fail in the rains, insecurity and sheer distance all complicate the movement of people and materials. An answer, or at least the outline of one, came from an unlikely place on November 3, during the American midterm elections.

In Los Angeles County, the Sheriff’s Department deployed eight helicopters, landing at seven helipads, to collect sealed ballot containers from places such as Lancaster, Palmdale and Van Nuys and fly them to the county’s central processing facility in the City of Industry. LAist, a news organization in Los Angeles reported that officials wanted to cut transport delays and to avoid giving communities closer to the centre an advantage in the timing of early results.

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The helicopters are the visible part of a partnership between the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, which runs elections, and the Sheriff’s Department, which supplies transport and security. The relationship itself is an old partnership. A 2012 report by electionline Weekly quoted a Registrar’s official saying the Sheriff’s Department had supported ballot transport from Catalina Island for more than 30 years, by boat or by aircraft depending on the weather. The election office chose the method. The Sheriff confirmed it three weeks before polling day.

The custody rules matter as much as the aircraft. Ballot containers are sealed and their contents recorded before they move. Departure times and container numbers are communicated ahead to the processing centre, and the numbers are checked again on arrival. No one is left alone with ballots or equipment.

Two things stand out. First, the election authority never surrendered its authority. The Sheriff provides a capability; the Registrar keeps the ballots, the process and the count. Second, the system does not depend on one mode of transport. Fog has diverted ballot helicopters in past Los Angeles elections, and ground routes carried on. Redundancy is part of the design. I found no evidence of a single countywide agreement governing all of this. What is documented is a long-running operational partnership with clearly defined roles, which is a more useful thing to copy than a document.

Los Angeles is not an outlier. In Hawaii, Maui County arranged charter flights with Kamaka Air to bring ballots from Molokaʻi and Lānaʻi, with sealed containers, signed handovers and election officials on board. The flights are procured in advance, not improvised on election night. In Arizona, Coconino County moved ballots out of Supai, the Havasupai village at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, by mule train, with riders from both major parties. In Ohio, the Erie County elections board, the Sheriff’s Office and the US Coast Guard share the job of bringing ballots back from Kelleys Island on Lake Erie, with seals checked and each transfer recorded in the presence of representatives of both parties.

Sky, canyon and lake. Three geographies, three different vehicles, one design: standing relationships with other public agencies, specialised transport planned in advance, and documented custody at every handover. That is the principle, and it travels. Nigeria no more needs helicopters for the Niger Delta than Arizona needed them for the Grand Canyon. It needs the architecture, with the transport matched to the terrain.

Here is what I am not saying. I am not asking INEC to learn from America. I am asking it to finish what it has already started.

INEC’s own review of the 2023 general election identified transportation, procurement, reverse logistics and security as areas needing improvement. The commission brought the National Union of Road Transport Workers, the National Association of Road Transport Owners and the Maritime Workers’ Union of Nigeria into the conversation. Its recommendations were specific: revise the memoranda of understanding with transport unions to deal with vehicle condition, driver control and the return of materials; work with the Federal Road Safety Corps on roadworthiness checks; enforce contractual penalties when providers fail; and strengthen supervision of transport agreements at the local government level. European Union observers, for their part, listed late deployment among the weaknesses of 2023.

These are not an outsider’s suggestions. They are INEC’s own findings. The question is whether they have become standing practice or remained entries in a report. A recommendation is not a reform, and a reform is not a practice until it has been budgeted, assigned and tested under pressure.

The new Electoral Logistics Committee and the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security give INEC a natural home for the work. What is missing is a formal framework that makes cooperation predictable. Call it an Election Logistics Partnership Framework, resting on four requirements.

First, written agreements that define who does what: INEC for planning and custody of materials; the Police for protection; the Road Safety Corps for roadworthiness; maritime agencies and boat operators for waterways; transport unions and operators for vehicles and drivers; emergency agencies for contingencies. Second, advance planning. Classify every polling unit by accessibility, match transport to terrain, contract it early and rehearse it. Third, a standard chain-of-custody record for every movement of sensitive materials, with a unique reference number, container count, seal numbers, times of departure and arrival, and the names and signatures of the releasing and receiving officials, plus a formal incident report for any broken seal or unexplained delay. Fourth, public reporting and an independent post-election review, so that failures are counted as carefully as votes.

A word of caution. In Nigeria, the involvement of security agencies in handling election materials will always raise questions of neutrality, and rightly so. The American examples must not be read as an argument for giving security agencies more power over elections. In Los Angeles, the Sheriff moves the ballots; he does not count them. In Nigeria, INEC officials must remain responsible for materials throughout. Security personnel must protect without taking independent custody. Party agents and accredited observers should be able to witness the relevant handovers. And faster transport is no substitute for transparent collation and timely publication of results.

INEC does not need to buy helicopters or import American procedures. It needs to take its own findings, give them budgets, owners and deadlines, and build the partnerships that make them routine. 

At the end of the day, democracy is measured not only by the right to cast a vote, but by a country’s ability to protect that vote and bring it home.

Adeola Akinremi is a public policy advisor, strategic communications expert, and the founder and CEO of Hintells, an AI-powered intelligence platform serving global businesses and diplomatic missions. He has extensive multilateral experience advising on governance, economic and policy reforms across global markets and can be reached at: [email protected]

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