Meic, MEC roll out mobile, web voter verification
The Malawi Election Information Centre (Meic) and Malawi Electoral Commission have rolled out mobile phone and web voter verification exercise that will see the electorate verifying their details via phones and Internet.
Meic project manager Levi Kabwato said in a press statement on Monday that the mobile and online exercises have been done with technical assistance from Smag Media UK and Code For Africa.
The mobile and web verification is only available to registered voters in constituencies where MEC will be conducting the voter verification exercises.
“To verify your voter registration status, one must send an SMS with their voter identification number 5VOTE to 58683. This SMS is free of charge on both Airtel and TNM networks.
“To receive voter registration details in Chichewa, for example, a registered voter will have to type CHE123456789 (CHE for Chichewa+ the voter’s nine digit ID Number) and send an SMS to 58683.
“To receive voter registration details in Chitumbuka, for example, a registered voter will have to type TUM123456789 (TUM for Chitumbuka + the voter’s nine digit ID Number) and send an SMS to 58683.
“To receive voter registration details in English, for example, a registered voter will have to type only their voter ID (example: 123456789) and send an SMS to 58683.
“To verify your voter registration status online, one has to go to http://gottovote.malawivote2014.org and follow the instructions outlined,” reads the statement.
I cannot see that this is helpful.
MEC seem to have announced this on Monday. I understand that this can only work where verification is currently taking place. Today is Wednesday, and we are in the final week of verification (I think), so very, very few are going to be helped here?
I wish that MEC would publish on its website the list of parliamentary candidates by constituency. In our village we know of only one, the useless incumbent who must be voted out. We failed to catch the announcement of the candidates on the radio, or buy the appropriate newspaper.
Today when I was verifying my name on the voters roll I asked the MEC representitive who our candidates are. She did not know, and waffled that it was up to some other organisation to come around the villages to tell us.
When I am next in Town I will have to go to MEC Regional Office to try to find out, so that everyone here in the viillage can know also.
What a shambles MEC is!