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Doubts still linger over accuracy, integrity of Uganda electoral body’s list

Saturday February 13 2016
EAECvotersRegister

An Electoral Commission official captures the details of a Ugandan citizen during the National ID registration process. The national ID cards will be instrumental in the upcoming elections. PHOTO | MORGAN MBABAZI | NATION MEDIA GROUP

Efforts by Uganda’s Electoral Commission to explain discrepancies in its voters’ register have cast doubts on the cleanness of the roll and, ultimately, the Electoral Commission’s ability to deliver a free and fair election.

President of the Democratic Party Norbert Mao has filed a petition in the Constitutional Court challenging how the Electoral Commission derived the register it intends to use in the elections on February 18. Mr Mao, who was denied nomination for the parliamentary race on the grounds that he is not a registered voter, filed the petition four days before the electoral body’s latest woes began on February 7.

READ: Uganda’s electoral commission faulted over voters register

On that day, Evelyn Namara, the vice chairperson of the ICT Association of Uganda — who wanted to know the number of eligible voters — found an Electoral Commission document titled Voter Count per Polling Station 2016 General Election.

According to the document, the total voter count across the 28,010 designated polling stations stood at 15,297,197 people. Of these, the number of females was 8,027,803 while that of males was 7,249,394. Yet an addition of these two demographics gives a total of 15,277,197 people — 20,000 less than the Electoral Commission’s stated total, which Ms Namara concluded were “ghost voters.” 

Ms Namara contacted the Electoral Commission for clarification, but a response did not come until February 9 when the electoral body — through its official Twitter handle — dismissed her additions as “baseless reports” that should be ignored.  

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“Our register is electronic and clean. Ghosts have no place on our register,” stated the tweet, kicking up a storm that eventually forced the Electoral Commission to pull down its original document and to revise its figures to reflect 15,277,197 people. 

According to Jotham Taremwa, the Electoral Commission’s spokesperson, the earlier figure was due to a “statistical error.” However, in the revised document, the Electoral Commission has scrapped the gender demographics — an omission that “takes away a critical data set, which is and will be useful in further analysis of the voter data per polling station,” said Javie Ssozi, who worked with Ms Namara to analyse the data.  

New discrepancy

The new figure also introduces a new discrepancy of one voter more (15,277,198), whose significance lies in the threshold required to win the presidency.

According to the Constitution, for one to be declared the winner of a presidential race, they need to have got 50 per cent plus one vote out of the total votes cast.  

Additionally, this document is not reconciled with another titled, Updated Polling Stations List and Voter Count for General Election, that reflects voter count as at December 29, 2015. It still contains data that the Electoral Commission attributed to a “statistical error.” 

“There has been no public explanation on how these discrepancies came about. Without a statement explaining how 20,000 voters ended up in the Electoral Commission database, these changes mean nothing,” said Mr Ssozi.  

This is not the first time the total number of people on the register has been questioned. A December 18 brief by the Citizens’ Coalition for Electoral Democracy in Uganda (CCEDU) noted how impossible it is for a country like Uganda with its population demographics, to have 15,277,197 million people eligible and registered to vote.  

At best, CCEDU estimated the number no more than 10 million. A look at the estimated number of people below 18 years by mid-2015 and the age structure according to the 2013 Uganda National Household Survey appears to support CCEDU’s observation.

“The Electoral Commission must come clean on the recently revealed discrepancies on the National Voter Register and reassure the electorate that it is ready to conduct the February 18 poll in a fair and transparent manner,” said a statement CCEDU released on February 12.  

A credible voter registration system is one of the cornerstones of a free and fair election.

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