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Database Reveals Voter Irregularities Database Reveals Voter Irregularities

Written by B.Bulgamaa

Thursday, June 05, 2008.

Despite changes to voter registration systems designed to eliminate disputes and confusion that appeared in the last election, electoral rolls are still confused, according to research conducted by the Democratic Party (DP).
The DP called a press conference last week, on May 22, to announce that the list of voters the General Election Committee (GEC) has placed on its website, www.gec.gov.mn, lists voters who are dead or even fabricated.
Some of the voters listed have invalid passport and civil registration numbers, while other long-term residents do not even appear on the rolls.
This is the first time the electoral rolls have become available in a database, due to a new amendment of the Law on Elections, which mandates the State Center for Citizen Registration and Information provide the information.

In previous parliamentary elections, voter lists were made by the governor of the relevant unit of administration - either a district or soum.
During its press conference, the DP said the electoral rolls listed 29 voters as being part of one family - all living in the second Ã¢â‚¬Å“GÃ¢â‚¬Â apartment in the 13th micro district.
In fact, the family has just two voters who have reached voting age.

A total of 105 voters are registered as living in the buildingÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s second, third, fourth and fifth apartments, yet only 11 voters actually reside there.
In response to the errors, the State Center for Citizen Registration and Information said that if a citizen has two addresses in its database only one would be registered to ensure a person cannot vote twice.

The address written in the passport is the one used for voter registration.
The Center promised that confusion regarding voters with two addresses will not appear in this parliamentary election. It organized citizen address registration across the country from January to March, with employees of the local governor traveling to every family and registering all people.

L.Gavaasuren, head of the registration department, said he was confident voting lists would be accurate.
Ã¢â‚¬Å“The votersÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ identification will be issued under the civil registration number and passport. The confusion in the list of voters wonÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t appear.Ã¢â‚¬Â
But as the DP research showed, the rolls include many voters who have fabricated civil registration and passport numbers.

According to the Election Law, independent civil society organizations are banned from seeing electoral rolls, with political parties the only organizations able to access voter lists.
The GECÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s website only makes some information available to the public, hiding how many people are registered at one address and therefore making it difficult to analyze the data.
State Center for Citizen Registration and Information gave the final version of the electoral roll to the GEC on May 28.
According to the CenterÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s information, a total of 1,561,248 voters are registered in the final version, an increase of 10,000 people since the previous registration.

The Center explained that the citizens, who were not listed in the database, had only recently registered.