Bangladesh Voters' List Eliminates All Ghost Names
DHAKA — Bangladesh's landmark digital electoral list got a clean bill on Thursday as an international audit agency said names on the roll are legitimate and it has eliminated all "ghost voters".
| News Videos | Cartoons | Entertainment | U.K. | U.S. | Take Our Poll | Sports | World | Follow Us On Twitter
Dadis Camara Declares Himself 'President' Of Guinea | Tzipi Livni Vows to End Hamas Control of Gaza: Israel
Bangladesh's interim government compiled the country's first ever computerized photo voter list -- containing 81 million names alongside photographs -- in August after an army-led drive lasting nearly a year.
The list has been hailed as a huge success, prompting political commentators to declare that the impoverished country was heading for the fairest elections in its history, after eliminating more than 12.7 million fake names.
The Washington-based International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), which has been tasked to monitor the elections by the United Nations, concluded that the list was compiled with "a high degree of accuracy."
"All the names on the roll are legitimate voters and nearly all eligible voters are on the list," it said, adding "no ghost voters were found on the 2008 photo voter list."
Bangladesh's army-backed administration took on the mammoth task of creating a new voters' roll in mid-2007 after one of the country's major parties said it would boycott polls if the previous electoral list remained in place.
The Awami League party alleged the previous list -- compiled by its main rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led government in 2005 -- had at least 14 million ghost names, which would be used for rigging polls.
It held a series of violent strikes that brought the country to a standstill in late 2006, prompting the army to step in and cancel polls scheduled for January 2007 and impose a state of emergency in the impoverished country.
The IFES carried out a study on 17,000 voters twice this year and found the list almost completely accurate, it said.
"In comparison with assessment of voter lists created during previous voter registration efforts in Bangladesh, the voter list for the December 2008 election has effectively registered the universe of eligible voters in Bangladesh," it said in a statement.
The United Nations welcomed the results of the audit report.
"We are pleased that the current voter list has passed the scrutiny of an independent team of auditors because a credible voter list is an essential ingredient for all free and fair elections," said Renata Dessallien, UN Resident Coordinator.
| News Videos | Cartoons | Entertainment | U.K. | U.S. | Take Our Poll | Sports | World | Follow Us On Twitter
