The Electoral Commissioner for Western Region, National Electoral Commission (NEC), Miata French has stated that ‘voter registration for the 2018 national election will be extracted from the upcoming civil register.
She made this statement during a stakeholders meeting held on Thursday 8th at the commissions headquarter on Tower Hill in Freetown.
French, during her opening remarks said the commission has been engaging in the boundary delimitation process which according to her will end by December this year. She added that they have also been engaging community stakeholders in order to broaden their interaction with the public so that they will get the public interested and at the same time get them informed about the processes.
“Civic registration”, according to her, will bring certainty to specific population in specific localities. “When the civil registration is completed within a time frame, NEC will then proceed with the certainty of these figures that is already established as the basis for boundary delimitation and the allocation of seats,” she noted.
The commissioner went on to say that children who are sixteen (16) years old now will also be counted in the civil registration process. This according to her is because those children would have turned eighteen (18) by the year 2018, which in turn will make them eligible to vote.
Though registration of those at age sixteen was a concern to the chairperson of the National Election Watch, Marcella Samba- Sesay, since according to her it will attract a lot of underage voters, French said that one should be qualified in the civil register for him to be qualified in the voter register adding that only one registration card will be issued out for both register.
Speaking on the type of registration that will be carried out, the commissioner also stated that, like the registration for the 2012 election, the civil registration will be a biometric form of registration. She added that those who register during the past biometric registration will have to register again in the civil registration.
By Edna Smalle
Friday September 09, 2016