Deadline for voter registration complaints extended to 6:00pm Wednesday: Elections Commission

The Elections Commission has accepted and finished processing all re-registration forms and has called for people to submit complaints over mismatched details by extended deadline of 6:00pm Wednesday (October 16).

The Commission warned that people whose ID card details do not match those on the voter registry would be unable to vote this coming Saturday, October 19.

Voter details can be checked in the Maldives by sending an SMS to 1414 in the format ‘VIS [ID#]’, or by calling the helpline on the same number. Registration details can also be checked online at http://elections.gov.mv/index2715.html

Following the conclusion of the complaints process, the commission has said it intends to publish the final registry before Thursday (October 17). The EC has printed the ballot papers and is currently in the process of vetting elections officials.

A sudden midnight ruling from the Supreme Court last week ordered the EC to redo the entire voter re-registration process from scratch, barely a week before the election.

Despite the extremely expedited timeline and a window of less than a day to re-register, more than 60,000 people still submitted the new fingerprint forms to vote in the first round – just 5000 short of the 65,000 who re-registered ahead of the annulled September 7 poll.

“It’s not possible to give more time. We will check the complaints we receive tomorrow, and make amendments if possible,” President of the Elections Commission Fuwad Thowfeek told media at a press conference last night (October 14).

Thowfeek said protesting PPM and MDA supporters in the re-registration centre the previous evening had caused a six hour delay in the registration process.

A system crash around 2:30pm on Sunday (October 13) due to the large volume of data saw the EC begin manual processing while the system was restarted. An official said the problem was fixed two hours later at 4:30pm, however some people reportedly became upset as the manual process meant they were unable to be immediately issued with a confirmation slip.

Meanwhile, PPM candidate Abdulla Yameen told Haveeru that only questionable registration forms would need to be subject to fingerprint identification.

Yameen previously told the paper that he would not sign the final voter registry – another requirement of the Supreme Court’s new election guidelines – should the voter list not be subject to fingerprint authentication, despite the lack of a comprehensive fingerprint database or institutional capacity to conduct verification on a national scale.

A police official told Haveeru that it would take 3-5 minutes to verify each fingerprint, if the print was recorded with the Department of National Registration or in the police database.