NEC Captures 299,969 New Registrants For December 8, 2020 Polls

By R. Joyclyn Wea:j.wea@newrepublicliberia.com

The National Elections Commission (NEC) formally announced the conclusion on the voter roll and exhibition exercises with emphasis on the cleaning of the voter roll, the electoral cases pending before the commission prior to the arrival of pre-parked election materials.

According to the NEC Chairperson, Davidetta Browne Lansanah, a total of two hundred, ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and sixty-nine (299,969) new registrants were captured nationwide during the 2020 voter roll update exercise in Liberia.

Of this number, Madam Lansanah said one hundred, eighteen thousand, nine hundred and twenty-three (118,923) constituting 39.6 percent, are females, while one hundred eighty-one thousand forty-six (181,046) constituting 60.4 percent, are males.

These figures she holds is provisional and likely to change due to the ongoing voter roll cleaning exercise.

 Lansanah mentioned that prior to the VRU exercise, the NEC Data Center had done a lot of work in furtherance of cleaning the 2017 voter roll putting the total number of registrants at the beginning of the VRU exercise at two million, one hundred, eighty-three thousand, three hundred eighty-one (2,183,381) new registrants.

The total numbers of registered voters then stood provisionally at two million, four hundred, eighty-three thousand, three hundred fifty (2,483,350).

Similarly; pursuant to the Joint Resolution of the Legislature instructing the NEC to further clean the voter roll and in the quest of the commission to maintain and strengthen the integrity of the roll, the NEC in collaboration with the United National Development Program (UNDP) election support project and the ECOWAS commission, brought in four data experts to support the local Date Staff.

These data experts are currently providing support to the NEC Data Center Staff in enhancing the quality of the voter roll for the December 8, 2020 special senatorial elections; representative by-elections and that of the constitutional referendum.

According to Browne Lansanah, the team has been working for two weeks and providing preliminary briefings to political parties and others stakeholders on the status of the voter roll and the work they along with the NEC Data Center Team are doing to get the roll ready for the December 8, 2020 polls.