Electoral roll confusion
Efforts to computerize Greece’s voting registers have fallen foul of myriad mistakes, as the electoral rolls have not been properly updated for over a century. Nevertheless, the government promised yesterday that the ongoing overhaul will be finished by the end of June, without mistakes. Interior Minister Costas Skandalidis, who yesterday visited the factory producing the new cards that will replace the voting booklets used in elections up until the last parliamentary polls on April 9, 2000, said the cards will have been sent to all municipalities by the end of May. The new cards will list a voter’s name and surname, date of birth and special 13-digit voting number which will remain unaltered even if voters change their constituency. It appears, however, that much of the information may still be inaccurate. Before the overhaul started, Interior Ministry officials were aware that some 340,000 people were listed on more than one municipal electoral roll, while failure to keep the lists updated had resulted in over 25,000 voters being catalogued as over 100 years old. Even now, the rolls listed on the ministry’s website www. ypes. gr contain many cases of voters listed in at least two municipalities – with different voting numbers – despite having officially transferred their voting rights to a specific constituency. Furthermore, many people do not appear on any of the lists, and therefore lack a voting number and the concomitant right to vote. And many names of people who have died years ago still appear on the lists, although their relatives have notified the authorities of their death. Voters can receive further details regarding the new system and their numbers on the 1464 hotline, or on the ministry’s website.
