By Taziz Hasairi.
Tripoli, 18 February 2014:
Military personnel can vote in Thursday’s elections for the 60-member Constitutional Committee, so long as they . . .[restrict]have registered, the Higher National Elections Commision (HNEC) announced yesterday.
They were not banned from voting in the 2012 Congression elections.
A spokeswoman for HNEC told the Libya Herald today that it had decided in January to allow individuals serving in the military to vote. She added that although they had not been given the vote in the 2012 election there had been no current regulations to the contrary.
She said that members of the the armed forces could vote on the condition that they had their national number, were in the possession of photographic ID and had registered during the registration period.
Military personnel who are on postings away from home will vote at polling stations for oil workers and by specifying which local area their vote should be counted for.
HNEC has no available statistics for the number of registered voters within the military.
Although military personal are able to register to vote, it is not known how many did so, given than there was the general perception that they could not exercise the right.
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