Door-to-door verification of voters’ list to begin tomorrow

Door to door verification of the voters’ list will start tomorrow (Monday), Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) Secretary Ishtiaq Ahmad Khan said.
Addressing a press conference at the ECP on Saturday he said that the door-to-door verification will be completed by September 30, 2011.
“This is a historic development in Pakistan which shall ensure free and transparent elections in the country,” he said.
He said NADRA had provided the Election Commission with voters’ lists of over 800 million people and a door-to-door campaign to verify the identity of the draft electoral rolls would start from August 22.
Over 200,000 verifying officials would conduct the verification exercise across the country.
The electoral rolls have already been distributed in 130 districts. The country has been divided in into 140000 census blocks.
After the verification process the voters’ lists will be handed over to NADRA and the final lists will be issued in March.
The Secretary added that after completion the new voters lists, repeat entries will not be possible. After completing the exercise, people would be provided opportunity to pinpoint any mistakes in the electoral rolls.
The final voter list would be printed in March 2012. And new elections would be held in accordance with the final list.
A voter would be allowed to cost his vote at either his permanent or temporary address but NADRA’s unique identification system would make it impossible for individuals to cast dual votes, he said.
After the issuance final voter lists, a mechanism would also be in place to register the vote of each and every new Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC) holder. NADRA will hand over the data of each new CNIC holder to ECP for onward inclusion in the voter list after scrutiny.
To a question, Khan said that women were deprived of their right to vote by mutual consent of contesting candidates in several constituencies and the ECP had recommended that the government and parliament introduce laws declaring elections null and void in constituencies where less than 20 percent of registered women voters cast their votes.
He said that NADRA already updated the electoral roll by removing unidentified voters and adding more that 36 million new voters.
Regarding the verification of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) he said Ministry of States and Frontier Region (SAFRON) has been asked to provide the list of IDPs for onward verification.
Water marked ballot papers: He said that the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has also decided to introduce water marked ballot papers aiming to eliminate fraudulent voting and the Printing Corporation of Pakistan had been asked to print water marked ballot papers.
“These steps by the ECP will improve the system and enforce the rule of the ballot, not bullet,” the secretary said.