By Ahmed Elumami.
Tripoli, 23 December 2013:
Nationwide voter registration for the election of the 60-Committee that will produce the new constitution, is . . .[restrict]edging up slowly.
The High National Electoral Committee (HNEC) said today that 683,113 Libyans had put their names down to take part in the ballot. This is up some 80,000 on three days ago, when the poor take-up decided the HNEC to extend the registration period to the end of the month.
HNEC public relations and out-reach director Hussam Zagaar told the Libya Herald that the registration deadline had been extended because only recently had voters recognised the importance of the vote.
Zagaar also said that voters had been confused by the registration process for the municipal council elections and the earlier process to elect the General National Congress in July 2012.
In what might appear to be an acceptance that the HNEC has not have publicised the vote sufficiently, Zagaar said that volunteers were still distributing leaflets at airports, hospitals and universities in order to raise awareness of the vote for the 60-Committee.
As of today, according to the HNEC, the 683,113 who had registered to vote were made up of 418,106 men and 265,007 women. Within this figure were were 3,386 expatriate Libyans who had registered to vote.
For the 2012 GNC elections some 2.8 million of the 3.3 million eligible voters registered for the ballot. If the HNEC passes its target of one million voters within the next seven says, it will still mean that only sightly more than a third of the voter numbers from 2012 will have decided to go to the voting station for a second time.
Zagaar also said that as from today, the HNEC would start to publish the lists of candidates for the 60-Committee and that 48 hours after the last names were revealed, the campaigning for election could begin.
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