News - Electoral register updating delayed by two weeks

The Elections Commissioner has informed Grama Niladharis there would be a two-week delay in updating the electoral register this year due to a backlog of work following the recently concluded local government polls.

The voter register is updated annually beginning on June 1.

The Elections Commissioner has said that since the Department has only around 90 full time officers, they are unable to complete the work on the register as planned. The recently concluded local government polls too contributed to the delay which was further aggravated following the postponement of polls to some councils. Generally the voter register once completed by July 1 is open to the public to correct any omissions. By January the register is completed. However this year the two week delay will delay work on the register.

Earlier the Elections Department embarked on a systematic programme to computerize electoral registers, in a bid to expedite revisions on the electoral register.

According to Elections Department officials generally only about 20% of names in the electoral register needed revision annually, but as it is updated manually the staff has to go through the entire list, where they spend time going through around 80% of names in the list, which exercise is not needed once the computerized system is installed.

Meanwhile the independent election monitoring body PAFFREL has called on all registered political parties to deploy party agents to visit the households with the Grama Niladhari when he hands over the application forms to be filled by the chief householder for updating the electoral register.