EC opens for complaints after the reregistration process

The Elections Commission of the Maldives (EC) has opened for complaints regarding the voters list after the reregistration process, for the second round of the 2023 Presidential Election. 

EC states that the complain window will be open on Friday and Saturday. 

EC opened reregistration for the second round of the Presidential Election on 15 September 2023. 

Habeeb disclosed that by the time the window closed on 17 September 2023, the commission received 26,011 forms via their online platforms and 24,036 forms were submitted straight to their respective offices. 

Habeeb stated that the commission was not able to determine whether 11,284 of these forms were valid. This includes 5,109 forms submitted online and 6,175 forms submitted to the offices. 

EC was unable to verify some of the forms due to not being able verify the person in the photo, submitting expired documents and repeated submissions from both systems as well as for reasons such as missing fingerprints, mismatched witness information and lack of a telephone number to contact to verify the information. 

A total of 282,395 were eligible to vote for the first round of the election. However, with 408 new voters, a total of 282,807 are now eligible to vote in the second round.

Only about 80 percent of the eligible voters exercised their right to vote in the first round.

As the simple majority of votes required was not reached by any candidate, front runners Dr. Mohamed Muizzu and President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih are headed for a run-off election.

The second round of voting in this year’s presidential election will take place from 8am to 5pm, on September 30.