Voters Registration : Stakeholders Can Do Better

The revision of the electoral lists for 2023 ended last August 31.  The Director General of Elections in Elections Cameroon (ELECAM), Erik Essousse during a press conference to present the balance sheet of the operation to revise electoral lists said some 368,119 new voters enrolled in the electoral registers this year.
Erik Essousse said the new potential voters registered this year was a good score. This brings the total number of registered voters in Cameroon to more than 7.5 million. This figure falls short of the targeted 10 million voters following the declarations of the Director General of Elections as far back as 2019. The registration process has not witnessed the anticipated enthusiasm and interest despite the fact that electoral registers are opened for the revision operation from January 1 to December 31 on non-election years in accordance with the Electoral Code. Everything being equal, the elections of Members of the National Assembly, Municipal Councillors and the President of the Republic will take place in 2025. These are elections done through direct universal suffrage. This implies that Elections Cameroon and elections stakeholders have just one and a half year to enrol more potential voters into the electoral registers. ELECAM’s officials consider the current registration situation as a good score but much can still be done to better the registration operation. This is more so, because the success of any electoral process starts with the number of registered voters. Specifically, the victory of any political party in any election depends on the number of its members and supporters who have enrolled in the voters lists. Though no citizen is compelled to register and vote in any election, the credibility of any election also greatly depends on the total number of the population that register and those that effectively cast their votes.
Elections Cameroon, leaders of political parties and civil society organizations that operate in the domain of politics have to go back to the drawing board and re -strategise on better ways of causing more pot...