CAIRO: In preparation for the upcoming parliamentary elections, the Ministry of Interior is developing new mechanisms to further organize the electoral process to ensure its integrity and transparency, said General Rifaat Qumsan, deputy minister of interior for administrative affairs. There are currently 50,650,000 citizens registered to vote during the three rounds of the upcoming parliamentary elections. Qumsan explained, in a workshop at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS), that the new database developed for the elections has a minimal percentage of error as it includes all citizens above 18 years old and is divided according to the residential address on the national ID. Furthermore, before election day, citizens that are registered to vote will be able to access the database on the internet or by mobile to know which voting stations they're registered in. Each voting station has only 1,000 registered voters to smoothen the electoral process, Qumsan told the press. All Egyptians above 18 are registered and eligible to vote except those in the police force or army, as well as patients in mental institutions and those involved in criminal cases. Diaa Rashwan, political analyst at the ACPSS, said that dividing voters according to their residential area is a major step, however, the Ministry of Interior also has to coordinate with the Ministry of Health in order to eliminate those who have passed away from the database, referring to the scheme used by the National Democratic Party in previous elections where they used dead citizens' IDs to vote. Rights activists, members of different political parties and analysts agreed that an electoral lists system is the way to guarantee fair representation of all segments of society in the different elected bodies. The Egyptian government is currently undergoing final preparations for the parliamentary elections, scheduled to take place in November. According to Rashwan, the elections will be the true test of the success of the January 25 Revolution. The Supreme Electoral Commission (SEC), which will be managing the upcoming parliamentary elections, is slated to issue the regulations for the political rights laws soon. The regulations will include 38 articles that will guide the electoral process and give powers to the SEC to manage every stage, from preparing voter lists to managing complaints related to the elections.
