Today, the CEC opened 574 registry update centers in all Palestinian electoral districts (31 of which are mobile centers). The update process will last for five days starting March 28 until 1 April, 2007. The Centers will be open from 8 am until 4 pm.
The CEC confirms the aim of this annual procedure which is to maintain an accurate and up-to-date voters registry that serves all electoral process.
The CEC launched an educational campaign to illustrate the updating process and its mechanisms to the public through the distribution of educational brochures to governmental and civil organizations and schools. More than 500 thousand brochures and 10,000 posters were distributed. The CEC published 80 advertisements in the local newspapers over a period of ten days. in addition to broadcasting 20 radio and 4 TV spots in local Radio and TV sets. Also, 2,500 meters of billboards were published. The CEC also published a list of the update centers in the local newspapers.
The CEC opened the toll- free line (1800 300 400) to answer the enquiries of the public regarding the updating procedures. In addition to this, a new page for the updating process was published into the CEC website www.elections.ps that contains all information related to the updating process as well as a list of all registry update centers.
The CEO, Mr. Hisham Kuhail, indicated that the update process targets Palestinians who weren’t registered in previous registration drives, and those born in 1989 or before. He also said that the Palestinian who work or reside in places far from their place of residence can register in remote update offices. Mr. Kuhail called on All Palestinians to participate in the update process to Check their registration information and correct any possible mistakes.
The CEC also trained 109 center supervisors who in their turn, provided training for the 676 centers working staff in all districts. The training focused on the aim of the updating process and its procedures.
The CEC, has previously conducted a number of educational workshops and meetings in the electoral districts with local observation bodies and accredited political parties to illustrate the procedures of the updating process and to encourage them to renew the accreditation applications of their observers and agents. The CEC announced that 72 observation bodies submitted new accreditation applications and 160 observation bodies submitted accreditation applications for 3,200 local observers. The number of political parties who will participate in the observation process reached 14 with 2,724 party agent.
It should be Indicated that the total number of registered voters in the voters list is 1,350,034. and the last updating process was conducted in 2005.