Number of registered voters falling sharply

The number of registered voters for the May 20 Tripartite Elections is falling sharply from the 7.5 million that the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) earlier announced, Nation on Sunday has established.

The reason for the drop, according to MEC, is that some quality assurance managers exaggerated the numbers of registered voters when filing on forms, but which are now being corrected in a validation exercise that is comparing the field count and the computer tally.

The commission’s spokesperson Sangwani Mwafulirwa—while confirming that the figure is falling—described the reductions as insignificant.

But one of the information, and communications technology (ICT) experts that were invited by the commission to review the numbers, confided in Nation on Sunday that the figure has already dropped by 200 000 so far.

He said the projection is that at the end of the field-computer comparison and the ongoing verification exercise, the number of registered voters could drop to around 6.9 million, which is 600 000 or eight percent lower than the initially announced 7.5 million.

The ICT expert said MEC admitted that there were errors in the registration of voters that resulted in some areas recording a higher number of registered voters on the daily record sheet than those that were actually registered on the voters’ roll.

A few weeks ago, Nation on Sunday carried out an analysis of voters’ data, which raised questions of, for example, how MEC could register more voters than the National Statistical Office’s (NSO) projected figures of eligible electors.

While the commission announced last December that it had registered 7 537 548 voters for the May 20 2014Tripartite Elections, NSO projections show that Malawi has 7 504 527 people above the voting age of 18.

This gap results in a positive variance of 33 021 voters—which means the commission achieved a more than 100 percent voter registration success rate that even MEC itself admitted was impossible and which two University of Malawi statistics academics said was flawed.

In that story, we also carried out another analysis using estimated voting age population of 7 504 527 for 2014 and the actual registered voters in 2009 of 5 870 819 and found that MEC should ideally have registered roughly 6.7 million voters this year, which would have been a success rate of around 90 percent.

In a written response to a questionnaire on Friday, MEC spokesperson Sangwani Mwafulirwa said the drop in figures follows a comparison between the field count released in December and the current computer tally. He called the dropping of figures an ‘arithmetical err’.

In a follow-up telephone interview on Saturday, Mwafulirwa clarified that during the registration exercise, voter registration officers would record the number of people registered on each date on a separate sheet.

He said MEC is now reconciling the number of recorded voters on daily basis and those of the actual voters’ roll where some variations have been noted between the two records.

“Where there have been differences between the field count released in December last year and the computer now, staff have investigated and if any forms were missing they are retrieved from the warehouse and captured. This is closing the gap,” he said in an email response on Friday.

However, Mwafulirwa refuted the voters’ roll drop of 200 000, saying the figure was being used out of context.

“When political party ICT experts visited the MEC on 10th April, the figure was given as at that date. Work has been ongoing since then on the various phases and any gaps in the data were being and are still being filled,” he said.

The major political parties say they have not yet been briefed by their ICT experts involved in the inspection of the voters’ roll.

Malawi Congress Party (MCP) spokesperson Jessie Kabwila said the experts will brief the party on Sunday(today) while Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) director of elections Kondwani Nankhumwa said the team of experts will brief the party next week whereas People’s Party (PP) acting secretary general Paul Maulidi said he was yet to receive the report.

However, Nankhumwa said it was not surprising that the numbers are now going down since a MEC commissioner [name withheld] told him that in some areas quality control officials exaggerated the figures and that MEC was investigating the matter.

“One MEC commissioner assured us that the figures are likely to go as down as 6.9 million,” Nankhumwa said.

Meanwhile, the CSO Grand Coalition has highlighted major concerns as the country is preparing for the May 20Tripartite Elections. The highlights include:

—Unsettled voters’s registration figures/ statistics.

—Unequal playing field through the abuse of public broadcasters favouring PP.

—Endorsement of presidential candidates.

—The recent report from the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority that says almost 83 percent of print and electronic private and public media houses are covering PP more than other parties.