The National Assembly (Parliament) of Nicaragua, controlled by the ruling party, approved this Wednesday a law that will allow Nicaraguans aged 16 and older to exercise their right to vote in the municipal elections on November 6, even with expired identity cards.
The so-called “Special Law for the validity of expired identity cards in order to exercise the right to vote in the municipal elections of November 6, 2022 and incorporation and activation of the citizens registered in the electoral roll” was approved with character urgent unanimously in the Assembly.
The initiative was presented by a group of deputies last Monday before the Board of Directors of the Assembly, which agreed, together with the heads of the parliamentary groups, to discuss it expeditiously without complying with the minimum 48 hours established by the Law, explained the first secretary of the Legislative, the official Loria Raquel Dixon.
“The purpose of this Law is to provide for the validity of citizen identity cards for those citizens with an expired identity card, solely to guarantee the right to universal, equal, direct, free and secret suffrage,” according to the text of the Law.
Therefore, according to the approved legislation, “it is considered valid, only on November 6, 2022, the identity cards that are expired on that date, to guarantee the right to vote to citizens in the municipal elections of the 6 November 2022”.
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The amendment will also allow any person who is on the list of registered citizens of a vote receiving board and is not on the respective electoral roll, to request their inclusion in that board by presenting their identity card and will be registered immediately and without more paperwork.
Sandinista deputy María Auxiliadora Martínez, president of the Assembly’s Special Constitutional Commission that analyzed the initiative, stated in plenary that the initiative had the consensus of the various legislative factions.
A total of 3,722,884 Nicaraguans over 16 years of age, the minimum age to vote, are eligible to elect the mayors, deputy mayors and councilors of the 153 municipalities in the country on November 6, according to data from the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE). ), which in one year dropped 755,450 voters without explaining the reasons.
In the general elections of November 7, 2021, in which the Sandinistas Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo were re-elected as president and vice president, respectively, with their main rivals in prison, the Electoral Power called 4,478,334 Nicaraguans to vote.
The ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which currently governs 141 municipalities, is the favorite to gain control of all Nicaraguan municipalities, due to the outlawing of three opposition parties and the imprisonment of their main leaders.
