MEC to register more voters in digital voter registration

Pic: An example of the BVR Kits utilized by National Registration Bureau that MEC has adapted for the Biometric Voter Registration exercise

As Malawi prepares for the 2019 Tripartite Elections, the Malawi Electoral Commission MEC says is it is expecting to register more than 9 million eligible voters during the upcoming  digital Voter Registration exercise  as compared to  the 2013 voter registration exercise where MEC registered  7.5 million voters through the previous,  manual, voter registration system.

This year’s voter registration exercise will utilize a Biometric Voter Registration Kit  which will  instantly  register voters by scanning  data from the newly introduced National ID to  produce a voter registration certificate in less than  half a minute.

The BVR is reported to be significantly faster and more efficient as compared to the  time-consuming  Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) system of collecting voter  data on paper then scanning the data onto a computer which saw people  queuing for hours waiting for a turn to be registered as voters in 2013. 

Speaking  during a demonstration of the Biometric Voter Registration process at Riverside Hotel in Lilongwe at the recent training of newly recruited MEC stringers,  MEC’s Deputy Director of ICT Ebony Msikawanthu   explained that the digital innovation in the voter registration process  is expected to reduce queues at voter registration centers as MEC officials will now be able to register hundreds of people in a single day at each registration centre.

According to Msikawanthu, the BVR  is also expected to eradicate some anomalies such as such as misspelled names and wrong voter photographs that were prevalent in the last voter registration exercise.

Meanwhile, the Electoral Body is currently conducting civic education awareness exercises to sensitize Malawians on its first ever digitized voter registration process. 

According to MEC, the first phase of the Biometric Voter Registration exercise  runs from 25th May 2018  to June 7, 2018 covering;  Mchinji District, Dowa District, Kasungu District, Kasungu Municipality, Nkhotakota  and Ntchisi District.