EC displays voters' register ahead of 2021 elections

ELECTIONS

The Electoral Commission (EC) will start displaying the national voters' register tomorrow. According to the EC chairperson, Justice Simon Byabakama, the register will be displayed at polling stations.

However, the display of the registers for special interest groups will take place at village levels. The EC recently updated the voters' register and the display is it's last major engagement with the public before an election. The exercise will run up to March 10. Byabakama said the exercise will begin at 8:00 am and end at 6:00 pm, including weekends.

The display of the register ahead of the election is intended to clean up the voters' roll by eliminating the dead and the underage persons who could have been wrongly registered, correcting the voters' records, and removing voters whose details appear more than once, among others.

Byabakama said the commission will display lists of persons who were recommended for deletion from the register during the verification exercise, which was conducted at the village level last October.

He was addressing a press conference about the display exercise at the EC headquarter in Kampala on Tuesday.

The EC boss added that eligible voters who may have applied for registration but whose particulars are missing on the register will be able to present there cases to the respective officials for inclusion.

"All complaints arising from the display exercise will be reported to returning officers of various electoral districts. The parish/ward tribunal appointed by the magistrate of the area shall consider and make the final decision as to whether one may be included or deleted from the register," the EC boss said.

The secretary to the commission, Sam Rwakoojo, appealed to Ugandans to confirm there particulars during the exercise, saying a clean voters' register is the most important document in any democratic election.

"You should not look for only your names, but look into the entire register thoroughly so that you can tell us if everyone on the register is Ugandan, and if they have been registered to vote from there places of birth or residence," he added.

Rwakoojo said the display of the voters' register exercise will cost sh24.5b. There will a display officer at each polling station and village. There will also be parish and sub-county supervisors as well as EC employees in the field.

The registers for special interest groups will be displayed between February 19 and 28. The groups include youth, persons with a disability, and older persons.  

Additional reporting by Richard Kinene