Good morning all and thanks for coming to this press briefing.
On behalf of my Colleague Commissioners who are currently in the field, I wish to give you the following update on the voter registration process.
1. About 95% of all centers nationwide opened on 3rd September 2022.
2. Sufficient materials were supplied to all Voter Registration Centers.
3. Some centers opened after 7am mostly due to poor road network and challenges in distributing registration materials. The Commission regret any convenience this may have caused.
4. The ECSL Situation Room has been active receiving calls from all over the country on the short code 838. Thanks to NATCOM, Africell, Qcell and Orange for facilitating this.
5. The staff in the field are having challenges to register first time voters. This is a technical issue which has to do with the Voter Verification software. It has however been resolved.
6. During the first two-days, the attention of the Commission attention was drawn to the issue power supply to the VVK.s and VIUs. Significant improvement has been done in this regard. We have received solar
panels to charge the batteries and distribution of those panels is ongoing. We have also made provision for generators in remote areas for charging of the power batteries and equipment
7. The Commission has been notified of attempts by some people to facilitate the registration of underage people. The Commission wants to remind the general citizens that it is a crime punishable by law. The Commission has the means to identify culprits and such persons will be prosecuted.
8. The Commission wants the public to know that voter registration field capture has two phases. This first phase will end on the 17 September 2022. Our Operations team will need two days to move equipment and staff for the second phase to start on the 20th September to 4th October.
9. The Commission is satisfied with the ongoing Voter Registration process having registered about 415465
Voters based on report from 65% centers out of 1815 centers open.
PRESS STATEMENT ON VOTER REGISTRATION
The attention of the Electoral Commission has been drawn to a video making rounds in the social media regarding a Registration Officer of the Electoral Commission attempting to explain the registration processes of new and existing registrants.
The Commission considers the Registration Officer’s message to have been taken out of context and the Commission hereby makes the following clarifications:
1. All citizens that are eligible for voter registration MUST go to the nearest Voter Registration Center in their Ward to register for the 24th June, 2023 elections.
a. This includes persons who had already been registered by the NCRA before the start of the ongoing voter registration exercise, and
b. Persons who had been registered by the Electoral Commission during the 2017 voter registration exercise.
c. This also includes persons who had not been registered neither by the NCRA nor by the Electoral Commission before the start of the ongoing voter registration exercise.
2. Those persons who had been registered by the NCRA and/or Electoral Commission before the ongoing voter registration exercise should go to the nearest Voter Registration Center in their Wards to confirm their voter registration by biometric authentication using their thumb/fingerprints. By completing this process, such persons will be registered into the 2022 Register of Voters.
3. Those persons who had not been registered neither by the NCRA nor by the Electoral Commission should go to the nearest Voter Registration Center in their Wards to:
a. Firstly, be registered in the civil registration system and a civil registration receipt will be provided to the registrant
b. Secondly, the registrant should proceed to the Voter Registration Officer in the same Voter Registration Center with his/her civil registration receipt and will be registered into the 2022 Register of Voters.
4. A final consolidation of the data will be done between these two categories of registrants before the Provisional Register of Voters is produced for exhibition.
