Good election starts with clean register
On October 11, I met a group of young people called Vijana in Makerere University to discuss the 2021 elections. Among the issues we discussed include youth participation, the highly monetised elections, etc, and how these impede youth participation in elections. We ended by talking about the Electoral Commission’s (EC) national voter update.
I asked the young people if they knew that the EC has rolled out the national voters update. They said they had not heard about it. It then occurred to me that it was not only the youth who had not heard about this very significant activity of the electoral calendar, but many other voters as well. I told them that update of the national voters’ register is the determining factor of who will vote and who won’t. The update provides an opportunity for citizen’s to confirm their names on the voters register.
On October 11, the EC held a national stakeholders workshop where they explained to participants what the national voter update entails. This was followed by the EC convening regional workshops on October 14-15.
After the regional workshops, the EC carried out village mobilisation campaigns between October 18 and October 20. It is now conducting village council meetings between, which started on October 21 and will end on October 28. We can all help ourselves by pushing out this message to our village WhatsApp forums and through various village meetings.
The update process will give an opportunity to citizens to scrutinise and identify their particulars in the EC database. What normally happens is that people think this process is not important because they have voted before and, therefore, they are automatically registered; but this is a wrong assumption.
Every election comes with an update and display process, because some people would have died, while others might want to change polling stations. Such changes cannot be effected unless you personally make it to the voter update centre.
The update process will be all encompassing for the youth, who elect their leaders through the electoral college system, people with disabilities, who have a special representatives in Parliament and all citizens who are 18 years and above. For all citizens who may want to contest for any electoral position, it is important to encourage all your voters to participate in this process.
The village council meeting will have a returning officer, a village chairperson, a village council resident or residents, sub-county supervisors and parish supervisors, plus ordinary voters. Ugandans should be vigilant right from village level. There will be scrutiny of the voter’s register to identify who is on the register. There are still challenges that afflict the national voters register. Complaints of ‘ghost’ voters remain.
In order to rid the voters register of any ineligible voters, the EC, the National Identification and Registration Authority, need to collaborate with the citizens.
