Voters Registration to start in July

Voter registration update for the 2024 national general election is tentatively set to start on the 17th of July. 

Solomon Islands Electoral Commission Operations Manager, Fredrick Bosoboe confirmed this at a media conference in Honiara yesterday.

He said the commission will be sending out field voter registration teams in July. 

“Field registration will continue for an estimated period of one month, by 26th August field registration is expected to be completed, the registration exercise will see us capturing new registrants, voters updating their existing voter details and removing deceased names from the voters list,” Mr Bosoboe said. 

Registration teams will cover all constituencies throughout the country, around 800 voter registration centers will be visited during the registration period. 

Mr. Bosoboe said there won’t be any out of constituency registration this year. 

 “If a registrant wants to register in any particular constituency, he/she will have to travel to the constituency, they cannot do it anywhere with any registration team except for the teams assigned to the constituency they intend to register in.”

More than 120 registration teams and 10 registration standby teams will be stationed in the provincial headquarters. 

The final voters list is set to be completed on the 25th of November and the public will likely see more changes in the process. These changes will be made because of the abuse to the system during past registrations.

“Voters are expected to produce ID, identification documents, in the case IDs are not available there has to be a statement or testimony applicable to all interested to register for the election.”

“Everybody has gotten use to receiving registration cards on the spot, this however will not be the case now, the abuse of the process in voters getting more than one voter card depending on how many registrations they’ve done will be limited here, we are looking at some time later after the list is completed then we will issue voter cards at that stage,” Mr Bosoboe said.

Meanwhile, the Commission is looking at implementing its pre-registration of 17 years old persons as provided for under the Electoral Act 2018. This is to allow those who turn 18 during the election date to vote.

The Commission expects around 40 to 70 thousand newly registered voters in the upcoming voters registration exercise. 

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By Sharon Nanau