Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) has outlined voter registration challenges in Mzuzu, including attempts to register twice or register for others in absentia.
On Thursday, a registration supervisor at Zolozolo Primary School in the city, Mary Chawinga, said MEC officials stopped a woman from registering with her newly-collected national ID after she had already registered with her national ID slip in Karonga. The woman’s second voter registration certificate has since been confiscated amid a probe.
In another case, a registration supervisor at Mzuzu Research Training Centre, Yesaya Soko, narrated how MEC officials had to sensitise some concerned wives of serving Malawi Defence Force officers to make them understand that they are not allowed to register for their husbands.
“We have some soldiers who went to the Democratic Republic of Congo [on peace-keeping missions] and their wives want to register them for voting. But we told them no one is allowed to register on behalf of another person,” he said.
Soko also said lack of National Registration Bureau registration forms temporarily delayed voter registration at the centre.
Meanwhile, MEC projected to register 9 million eligible voters in the 2018 voter registration exercise. So far, 6 264 183 registered in phases One to Seven, representing 81 percent of the predicted 7 745 095 for the first seven phases.
