Iraqi youth, varsity students swell biometric voter registry ahead of November vote

There’s encouraging participation from young people and university students in Iraq in an ongoing voter registration process in the country, the elections agency has announced.

The Iraqi Election Commission (IEC) said recently that of the 1.6 million new biometric voter cards issued, many of them are held by this demographic which mirrors their commitment to participating in federal parliamentary elections coming up by the end of the year, NRT reports.

In May, the IEC reported that up to 8 million eligible citizens were yet to update their biometric voter registration details, pushing the election management agency to extend the deadline to June 15.

According to the IEC, the total number of Iraqis who have a voter’s card now stands at 21 million.

The head of the IEC’s media team, Imad Jamil, is quoted as warning against double registration. The official says there is no need registering afresh except a voter needs to change their polling address or correct an error on their voter’s card.

The new registrations, according to the IEC, has seen strong participation in Baghdad, Nineveh, Basra, and Sulaymaniyah regions.

It is also reported that among those who have registered are more than 33,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). The process is said to be ongoing in 21 IDP camps, Basnews reports, with the voting procedure for IDPs to be organized in line with a revised election legislation of 2018.

As the deadline draws closer, the election management body has been urging citizens to update their details in the voter registry, an exercise which is part of efforts by the government to effectively tackle fraud and other irregularities in the November ballot.

In a bid to enhance its biometric data storage capacity, Iraq is building a data center in partnership with Thales, which will integrate its national ID and forensic data.

At the start of the year, Veridos also celebrated a milestone of issuing 40 million national digital IDs in the country.

Article Topics

biometric enrollment  |  biometrics  |  identity management  |  Iraq  |  voter registration