A nearly $1 million voter registration drive ended Friday with nationwide registration nudging up less than 1 percent, the National Election Committee reported Monday.
NEC staff registered 273,847 voters over 22 days in the annual registration drive, said Tep Nitha, the committee’s secretary-general, leaving registration at about 93.86 percent of eligible voters.
A drive in early 2003, months before the parliamentary elections, ended with about 93 percent registered.
Tep Nitha said the committee was pleased with the latest registration. Most of the newly registered voters turned 18 in the past year, he added.
But the $910,000 budgeted for the drive, which calculates to roughly $3.35 per newly registered voter, drew criticism from some election experts.
“The NEC registered a small number of people compared to the amount of money they spent,” said Hang Puthea, executive director of the Neutral and Impartial Committee for Free and Fair Elections, a watchdog group.
He also said his monitors reported a slack voter information campaign and lazy registration efforts on the part of many commune clerks.
Tep Nitha dismissed those complaints, however, and noted that deceased persons and immigrants were stricken from the list.
“It is the people’s duty to register. They must volunteer to register, so we can not register all of them. I think we had good results,” he said.
He added that the committee has not determined the total cost of the drive, which began at the beginning of the month and wrapped up Friday.
The announcement opens a formal month-long period allowing for complaints of irregularities. But if the NEC does not receive any complaints about the process before Wednesday, the list will be finalized, Tep Nitha said.
