Ghost names out

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By CLIFFORD FAIPARIK
ELECTORAL Commissioner Patilias Gamato says ghost names which had caused problems during the 2012 general election have been removed from the common roll.
Outlining preparations for the 2017 general election and the local level government elections yesterday, he said around 30,000 public servants would be employed as election officials around the country.
The commission will print 15 million ballot papers for the national and LLG elections.
“The 2012 national election common roll has been cleaned and we are now entering new data,” he said.
The Australian Electoral Commission yesterday presented a report on the roll-cleaning exercise at a political party branding and campaign strategies workshop in Port Moresby. It will be used to develop a training tool kit.
Gamato said lessons learnt from the roll-cleaning exercise would give electoral officials new skills, knowledge and understanding on roll management.
Training is being conducted in the provinces for election managers, assistant election managers, returning officers, assistant returning officers, data coordinators and data processing officers.
“Our greatest challenge now is timing. Time is against us. We will however do our best to have the electoral rolls updated and completed by January 2017, and objections by February 2017,” Gamato said.
He said the commission would continue work on the roll updating during the rest of the year.
Roll updating is expected to take two months of field work and one month of data entry in the provinces.
After the rolls are updated, preliminary roll will be printed and published for objections. The objection period is for a month. After that, the roll will be printed for use in next year’s national and LLG elections.
Gamato said the budget for the 2017 national and LLG elections had been submitted to the Government.