EC gets more voters than expected as it updates the voter roll

The Election Commission has found several hundreds of thousands of voters over its estimates as it is updating the voter roll leaving out fake voters.

However, the EC’s National Identity Registration Division is saying this is ‘normal’.

The current electoral roll lists 91,950,641 voters. With an estimated five percent increase in voters, the EC had prepared for an additional 4.6 million voters.

But 4,829,996 additional people have so far been enrolled in the update. The number of registered absent voters is 873,505.

Adding these up, the number of new voters reaches about 5.6 million. If they are finally entered into the voter roll the voting age population will be about 97 million, over 61 percent of the population.

This implies that only 39 percent of the population is under 18.

National Identity Registration Division Director General Brig Gen Sultanuzzaman Md Saleh Uddin said, “It’s not unnatural for the number of new voters to exceed the estimate. We’re putting more emphasis on no person in the voting age getting left behind.”

He said the division would keep in mind the attempts of refugees to become voters, to have multiple voter IDs and giving false information while finalising the new list.

He said the first draft of the list would be published in January and the final list after resolving all objections.

“After finalising the list we’ll look at how many new voters we have. How many people have died, how many entries have been rejected, how many voters have moved or otherwise changed information,” he said.

The director general said all possible efforts had been taken to get an error-free voter roll and database.

The voter roll updating has been going on since May 15. The EC has covered 500 Upazilas including the city corporation areas, collecting information by going from door to door.

The registration process will end on Nov 15.