NEC Agrees To Take Action To Improve Voter Lists

The National Election Com­mittee will issue new guidelines to commune officials to improve Cambodia’s voter lists, but is op­posed to an independent audit of the lists as proposed by election monitors, NEC Secretary-General Tep Nytha said Thursday.

The NEC will issue directives to commune officials to ensure that they remove or correct the names of voters who have changed ad­dress, died or are registered twice, the NEC said in a Wednesday state­ment. Commune officials will begin updating the voter lists in June, the statement added.

Election monitors say the voter lists may contain hundreds of thousands of ghost voters, while many voters found themselves unable to vote in the April 1 commune elections because their names were not on the lists.

Tep Nytha said the voter registration process will be reformed. Commune clerks will be instructed to photocopy existing voter lists when they need to be reproduced, rather than copying them by hand, he said.

“New voters names will still be handwritten, but [clerks] will be instructed to write neatly,” Tep Nytha said. “Voters—especially those whose data was reportedly wrong—will be telephoned to [be] verified and corrected.” The voter registration period for the 2008 national elections has also been extended from 20 to 30 days, Tep Nytha added.

Muth Channtha, Norodom Rana­riddh Party spokesman, said he welcomed the NEC’s plans. “The NEC is acknowledging its mistakes,” he said. He added, however, that errors inserted into the voter list may not be due to a lack of training.

“Commune clerks intentionally misspell names and insert them in the database,” he claimed.

Mar Sophal, monitoring coordinator for the Committee for Free and Fair Elections, said the voter lists should be examined by a third party.

“We want the NEC to audit the voter lists and open itself to a credible research institution,” he said.

A Comfrel-organized audit of the 2005 voter lists found that 10 percent of the names were “ghost voters,” Mar Sophal added.

Tep Nytha said the NEC does not need an outside group to audit its own voter lists, as NEC was already neutral and independent, adding that such an initiative was not supported by electoral law.

Related Stories

Latest News