July 10, 2007	Tuesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 24, 1428

ISLAMABAD, July 9: A report based on the findings of a survey conducted jointly by two non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in 19 districts of the country has found several discrepancies and errors in the draft voters’ list put on display by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for general public.

“Our findings confirm the concerns and questions being raised about the accuracy and completeness of the preliminary voters list,” National Democratic Institute (NDI) country director Sheila Fruman said while releasing a review report on controversial draft voters’ list here on Monday, says a press release.

Executive Director of Centre for Civic Education (CCE) Zafarullah Khan was also present on the occasion.

The report indicates that about 30 per cent eligible voters are missing and another 26 per cent of the names on the lists are either incorrect or have duplicate entries.

Based on the results of the survey, the NDI and the CCE concluded that it was critical that the ECP take immediate steps to ensure the list was corrected and that unregistered voters had an opportunity to get registered.

Making public the findings of the review of the preliminary voters list undertaken by local branches and youth wings of eight political parties and civic activists in 19 districts in all the four provinces and the federal capital, the NDI and the CCE representatives said in a review of 3,664 entries, 950 (26 per cent) were not found at the address given on the voters’ list.

This suggests that out of the 52 million names on the list, upto 13 million entries may be duplicates or incorrect.

The local branches and youth wings of political parties also checked the names of 4,514 of their members who are eligible voters to find that 1,342 (30 per cent) were missing from the list.

“This indicates that about 16 million (30 per cent) eligible voters are yet to be registered,” they observed.

Similarly, out of the 71 display centres visited by the observers, 10 (14 per cent) were non-functional. All 71 centres, however, were located at accessible and neutral places.

In a comparison of the number of registered voters from previous elections with this year’s preliminary voters’ list, there were hundreds of thousands fewer registered voters in 10 districts sampled. In Lahore, for example, there were almost a million (933,500) fewer registered voters than in the 2002 and Jhang had 499,203 fewer voters registered on the preliminary list than on the 2002 voters’ list.

The findings of the survey revealed that 48 per cent people were not aware of the exact location of a display centre in their neighbourhood. Many thought they were already registered because they were unaware of the need to register afresh on the new computerised list.

“This suggests that the ECP voters education campaign did not deliver a clear message that afresh registration was required,” the report observed.

The review also showed that the ECP failed to grasp new possibilities of using local cable networks and press clubs to give information to voters.