How is the national electoral register created?
Sierra Leone
Part III: “There shall be a National Voters Register containing a voter’s name, date and place of birth, current address; sex, signature, thumbprints and other details. The Electoral Commission has authority to reproduce, keep, modify the format, content and design of the Voters register. The voters register is to be the final evidence of the right to vote.”
The National Civil Registration Act 2016
25. Notwithstanding anything contained in any other law relating to data protection, the Director-General shall provide information in relation to births, adoptions, deaths, marriages, divorces or nullities registered under this Act to -
(a) the Minister responsible for defence for the purpose of the administration of the defence of the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces;
(b) the National Electoral Commission for the purpose of getting an updated register of voters for the conduct of public elections and referenda; […]
EU Election Observation Mission – SIERRA LEONE 2018
The NEC, as mandated by the Constitution, organised all past voter registration processes. The 2016 National Civil Registration Act, however, laid foundations for the establishment of a permanent civil register, which would serve as a base for the register of voters. For this end, a separate institution was created, the National Civil Registration Authority (NCRA). This conflict in legal provisions brought about a minor confrontation between the two bodies as to which institution should be in charge of the registration of voters. Similarly, the issue of the ownership of the process and the resulting database was of concern. At the start of 2017, the NCRA seemed to have won the battle.
Since the civil register intended to capture more comprehensive information on each person, the 2012 biometric voter registration data were not to be used at all. In January 2017, the state purchased, on behalf of the newly created NCRA, 3,800 (+266 spare ones) registration kits to launch the general civil registration. Nevertheless, due to a lack of time, resources and capacity on the part of the NCRA, this ambitious project was not completed.
Given the time pressure, the NEC, possessing the necessary expertise, had to conduct a brand new registration of persons older than 17 years between 20 March and 30 April 2017, using the NCRA infrastructure, i.e. biometric registration kits and servers. After a two-month period of adjudication and de-duplication conducted by the NCRA during which 53,000 duplicate entries were found, the NEC received the provisional voter register for exhibition between 22 and 28 August 2017, followed by a three-day period for challenges. On 6 September 2017, only just complying with the legal six-month deadline before elections, the NEC announced the number of registered voters to be
3,178,663. At the same time, however, the NEC admitted that the data of 39,276 persons included in the final figure, were missing in the electronic database (especially due to broken-down biometric registration machines). In the course of September the NEC reconstructed the missing data from manual registration forms and journals. Nevertheless, photos of 23,520 persons were still missing, but for a considerable part of the affected voters they were recaptured during the voter ID (VID) card distribution in the same registration centres, between November 25 and December 24. As the revision of electoral boundaries ran in parallel to the voter registration, 289,559 voter identification cards were produced with incorrect information on voters’ wards or constituencies.
The NEC managed to reprint and redistribute most of these cards three weeks before the election day in the seven affected districts. Stakeholders, including civil society organisations who observed the registration exercise, considered the voter register to be inclusive and credible. The EU EOM did not detect any systemic problems related to the quality of the voter register on election day either.
As provided in the Public Elections Act, 2012, which was still in force in 2018 elections, the NEC is in charge of voter registration. However, The National Civil Registration Act 2016 (Article 25) has introduced new procedure for obtaining voter information using permanent civil registry. Nevertheless, due to some obstacles (see EU EOM report, pages 15-16), the registration of voters for 2018 election was still conduced by NEC.
