In an in­ter­view ear­li­er to­day, THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine pro­vid­ed an up­date on his ex­pe­ri­ence at the polling sta­tion and the over­all progress of the elec­tion.

The process, ac­cord­ing to Au­gus­tine, went smooth­ly. "I was elect­ed num­ber 149 in my sta­tion. For a rur­al area like Spey­side, that is pret­ty high at this time of the day. Usu­al­ly, we would get a surge in the late af­ter­noon hours. But it meant that we had quite a num­ber of vot­ers ear­ly this morn­ing," he said. He fur­ther ex­plained that his polling sta­tion car­ries two di­vi­sions, and the num­ber 149 re­ferred to his po­si­tion in the polling di­vi­sion where he vot­ed.

Au­gus­tine was al­so asked if there were any is­sues dur­ing the morn­ing's vot­ing process. He ac­knowl­edged prob­lems en­coun­tered in the West, specif­i­cal­ly re­gard­ing the ap­point­ment of sub-agents. "The process for ap­point­ing sub-agents is one where the par­ty, by way of a let­ter to EBC, will list and ap­point those sub-agents five days pri­or. We in fact did that," he ex­plained. Sub-agents re­place polling agents when nec­es­sary, for in­stance, if a polling agent needs to leave the sta­tion tem­porar­i­ly. How­ev­er, Au­gus­tine stat­ed that de­spite fol­low­ing the prop­er pro­ce­dure, sub-agents were not al­lowed ac­cess to the polling sta­tion. "Our sub-agents were not al­lowed in­side, and we had to call Mr. Par­rys out. We did what was re­quired based on the reg­u­la­tions and the law, and there’s no rea­son why all sub-agents were not al­lowed in­side," he said.