NEC Admits 270,000 Names Were Duplicated on Voter List

Just two months after the contested national election, commune officials across the country on Tuesday began the annual 20-day process of registering voters, while the National Election Committee (NEC) announced that 270,000 duplicated names would be removed from the voter list used in July. NEC Secretary-General Tep Nytha said an estimated 337,000 people would have turned 18 since the July 28 election, meaning that they are now eligible to register to vote, even though the next time the public votes will not be until the 2017 commune council elections. According to the NEC’s computerized 2012 voter list, there were 270,000 duplicated names on the list that need to be removed, Mr. Nytha said by telephone. Sup­porting that figure, commune officials who hand-checked the voter lists found that more than 130,000 names were duplicated or belong­ed to people who had died or moved residence, Mr. Nytha said. … On the day of the July election, scores of voters interviewed at polling stations said they had encountered problems when they tried to vote. Many said they found their names crossed out because someone else had voted using their identity. In a written statement Tuesday, the opposition CNRP demanded that the voter registration process undergo massive reforms and that the process be delayed. … In the lead-up to the July election, both the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (Comfrel) and the Washington-based National Democratic Institute (NDI) estimated that up to 1 million voters would be disenfranchised because of problems associated with the NEC compiling the voter list. Defending the election, Deputy Prime Minister Sok An on Monday told the Council of Ministers that both Comfrel and NDI had “exaggerated the number of voters” who would not be able to vote. “When the NEC demanded proof of the lost voters, the opposition party and the two NGOs refused to cooperate to provide the voter lists with who they said would lose their names,” Mr. An said. …

 Kuch Naren
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/elections/nec-admits-270000-names-were-duplicated-on-voter-list-44151/