Maldives elections body publishes voters registry

The Elections Commission has published a revised voters list with details of the ballot boxes where people are registered to vote.

Some 78,964 people have been re-registered to vote outside their island of permanent residence, EC president Ahmed Shareef revealed at a press briefing Sunday evening.

Out of 95,739 re-registration forms submitted before the August 11 deadline, Shareef said 5,626 forms were rejected because police were unable to verify fingerprints.

“I’m not saying at all that these unverified forms are fraudulent,” he said, explaining that fingerprints on thousands of forms were smudged or unclear.

Contrary to the opposition’s claim that the majority were from their supporters, Shareef said the rejected forms include 2,076 submitted by the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party and 1,789 from the ruling Progressive Party of Maldives.

These voters can resubmit forms between Monday and Wednesday.

The total number of re-registration forms exceeded 95,000 because thousands of people applied twice, Shareef noted, which happened due to delays in the submission of their first form through “institutions or political parties”.

More than 62,000 people re-registered for the 2014 parliamentary elections.

The number of voters this year stands at 262,135, down by about 1,000 from the first voter list made public in June.

The deadline for submitting complaints concerning the list is Wednesday.

Shareef blamed deliberate manipulation of the re-registration process for delays in finalising the list.

There were 1,892 cases where the fingerprint was not from the person whose information was on the form.

The EC will seek fraud charges against the people who submitted the forms and those who signed them as witnesses, Shareef vowed.

He declined to say which party submitted the fraudulent forms. Details will be revealed at court, he said.

The five-member commission has been under fire from the opposition with allegations of registration fraud and collusion with the ruling party to favour the incumbent.

But Shareef defended the integrity of the electoral process and addressed some of the allegations, including speculation over tablets that could be used to falsify results.

“There will be no difference in the vote counting process from previous elections,” he declared repeatedly, assuring that ballots will be counted in front of candidate representatives, monitors and observers. The result will be announced at each polling station before it is sent to the election headquarters in Malé.

The EC also announced revised details of the number of ballot boxes, observers and monitors,

• 472 ballot boxes in total
• 55 ballot boxes for voters from Malé, including the capital’s suburbs Hulhumalé and Vilimalé
• 67 ballot boxes for voters from other islands who reside in Malé or its suburbs
• 302 ballot boxes in rest of the country, including all inhabited islands and the southern Addu City and Fuvahmulah City
• 35 ballot boxes on resort islands
• Four ballot boxes in jails
• Four ballot boxes on industrial islands
• Five ballot boxes overseas, including two in Colombo, Sri Lanka and one each in Trivandrum, India, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and London, England
• 3,506 local election monitors, including 1,042 from PSM, 441 from Raajje TV, 432 from Channel 13, 375 from Sun, 350 from Minivan 97, 303 from Mihaaru, 139 from Vmedia, 122 from Avas, 216 from Vaguthu, and 86 from other media organisations.
• 2,524 local election observers, including 469 from MDA, 448 from MDP, 431 from PPM, 379 from DRP, 55 from JP, 47 from Adhaalath Party, 328 from Transparency Maldives, 278 from Women & Democracy, 75 from the Human Rights Commission, and 14 individuals.
• 34 international media monitors
• 25 international election observers
• 3,895 election officials out of more than 8,000 who applied for the temp jobs