In the run-up to the disputed municipal votes of 2022, the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) eliminated more than 755,000 voters from the electoral roll, going from 4.4 million Nicaraguans registered for “the 2021 electoral farce” to 3.7 million qualified people to vote this year.
The information disclosed by the Electoral Power in its newsletter number six details that “the electoral roll is made up of 3,722,884 Nicaraguan citizens who are summoned to exercise their right to vote, on November 6 next in the 153 municipalities of the country” . But it doesn’t provide no explanation about the citizens who were erased from the register.
For the director of the Urnas Abiertas observatory, Olga Valle, the elimination of citizens from the electoral roll goes against the natural growth of the Nicaraguan population and this bad practice is recurrent in the questioned electoral tribunal.
“The Supreme Electoral Council has reported that the electoral roll is made up of 3,722,884 people, this implies a reduction of 755,000 people compared to last year, in addition to this the fact that each year the electoral roll should grow by 100,000 people —this has been its historical behavior—this growth is not reflected in the latest figures given to us by the electoral authority,” Valle said.
The researcher recalled that for the 2021 elections, in which Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo were re-elected without political competition, the CSE “also disappeared around a million voters in the catalog of voters.”
The padrón is “a key document in any electoral process,” Valle explained. This document “should be shared with the public to generate trust and so that different independent bodies can audit it. However, in recent years, the ability to monitor this document and this process has been reduced,” he stressed.
The CSE barely handed over the electoral register to the political parties on September 22, with a month and a half remaining before voting day, a situation that does not allow any type of citizen oversight.
JRV Reduction
The CSE also compacted the 3,106 Voting Centers, by eliminating 5,528 Vote Reception Boards (JRV), going from 13,459 JRV enabled in general voting in 2021 to 7,931 (JRV) enabled this year.
The measure is part of the reform to Law 331, the Electoral Law, approved last May by the National Assembly, in which —among other things— an “express electoral process” was established and the number of voters increased from 400 to 600. voters for each JRV. Measure that, in other democracies, is taken when there are high levels of abstentionism.
The changes to the Electoral Law also establish “greater control over the electoral process, limit citizen oversight and contradict the recommendations” of civil society and international organizations, the Open Ballot observatory warned at the time.
For Open Ballot Boxes, “none” of the changes made suggest “fundamental reforms” that contribute to improving the transparency or general integrity of the electoral system, “such as the departidization of the intermediate instances of electoral administration, nor are they reforms that allow electoral observation Independent”.
During the 2021 general elections, Urnas Abiertas was the only civil society organization that was able to observe the voting, despite the Daniel Ortega regime’s rejection of all electoral observation bodies. For this reason, the organization reiterated that “Nicaragua needs a credible, comprehensive and legitimate electoral process,” but “the conditions to have such a process go through recovering the fundamental freedoms” of Nicaraguans.
