Somaliland’s Voter Registration: It better be done right

[Jacaylbaro]

(Somalilandpress)-During the last seven years, Somaliland conducted successful democratic elections to elect municipal councils, members of parliament and a president. There were no voter registrations during those elections. An indelible ink on the index finger was used as deterrence against voter fraud. Still, independent election monitors certified that those elections were, by and large, free and fair.

 

But the standard to hold democratic elections is to have all voters registered so that each person can cast only one vote. As Somaliland faced a new cycle of elections, the government aspired, and made it known to the international community, to enhance the country’s democratic process to the universal standard whereby all voters are registered. The international community responded with a very generous grant of $14 million to register all voting age people.

 

The donors selected a contractor to deliver voter registration equipment to the country and trained local staff on the equipment and how to conduct the process.

 

During the last two months voter registration has been taking place in the country. The number of people registered in Sahel and Awdal- the first two regions where the registration took place- was close to the number of people who had voted in the preceding elections. For the next regions in the process, Hargeisa saw the number of people who registered to be twice the number of people who went to the polls in prior election and for Burao the number tripled, to about 330,000 according to press accounts.

 

The donors have provided a large amount of money for the project, indicating the high level of interest and support the international community has for democracy in Somaliland. The software that is being used to register people is designed to match each genuine finger print with a unique name. A report can be generated for all deviations from this such as the existence of multiple names for a single finger print or names without corresponding, distinct finger prints.

 

It seems that there will be a tolerable deviation rate. If for example there is 0.5% deviation, I think that will be tolerated because it is not possible to expect that 100% of all names will have distinct finger prints. But if we have high deviation rate, than it will be a mess to remedy the situation. Shall we throw away all those deviations? Will it be better to redo in regions where large deviation were found to have occurred?

 

The fact is after voters in the remaining two regions are registered then the experts, and the donors, will query the system to learn about the process in each and every region.

 

The purpose of the voter registration effort is to have one person one vote. If, however, it happens that there are large irregularities in the registration process, it will adversely affect Somaliland in two ways:

 

(1) the international community will think twice before granting any more aid to Somaliland

 

(2) it will cause instability internally because regions that conducted themselves responsibly will not accept the outcome of a rigged registration process.

 

The Election Commission, the three political parties and the government must ensure that the voter registration is done right. We simply can not afford a registration effort that is not nearly 100% accurate. We should not rush to a presidential election unless every thing is certified to be transparent and accurate.

 

 

By Adan H Iman, Los Angeles