Presidente da CNE, Dom Carlos Matsinhe, durante o lançamento oficial do Recenseamento Eleitoral 2023
Maputo, 20 Apr (AIM) – Voter registration ahead of the Mozambican municipal elections scheduled for 11 October began on Thursday.
The registration period lasts until 3 June. All citizens living in the 65 municipalities must register, if they intend to vote, regardless of how many times they have registered in the past.
Only voter cards issued this year will be valid for the municipal elections. Cards issued for the 2018 local and the 2019 general elections are useless, as are the cards issued earlier this year in the pilot registration exercise.
According to the figures given by the National Statistics Institute (INE), there are almost ten million people of voting age in the 65 municipalities. (The precise figure is 9.921,625).
Voter registration takes place in all districts that contain municipalities, plus Maputo city, which has the status both of a province and of a municipality.
62 districts contain municipalities. In most of these, there is just one municipality. But two districts contain two municipalities: they are Boane (Boane town and Matola-Rio) and Bilene (Macia and Bilene beach).
One oddity is that the voter registration covers all those citizens of voting age (18 years and above) living in the districts, even though only those resident in the municipal areas will be able to vote.
The INE projections show that the city with the largest population of voting age is Matola (794,195), followed by Maputo (728,946), and Nampula (484,174).
The frequent claim that Beira is the second largest city in the country is quite untrue. It is the fourth largest, with a voting age population of 389,093.
There are 4,292 voter registration posts, and 3,192 members of registration brigades. 4,400 computers (known as Mobile IDs) will be used for the registration. 2,900 of these were used in the 2018 and 2019 elections, and the rest are new acquisitions.
According to the National Elections Commission (CNE), the total cost of the municipal elections, from voter registration through to publication of the results, is 14 billion meticais (about 219 million dollars, at the current exchange rate).
(AIM)
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