22 Feb 2006

Samoa elections office issues final tally for registered votes under new system

4:21 pm on 22 February 2006

Samoa's elections office has confirmed the final number of people registered to vote in the general election at the end of next month.

79,118 have registered, giving fingerprints and photos for the first time in an effort to prevent a repeat of registration fraud at the 2001 election.

Then, 92,000 people registered, with many people registering three or four times.

The electoral commissioner, Tanuvasa Isitolo Lemisio, says some people this time round have tried to cheat members of their own families...

"...there have been incidences of would-be voters coming in and trying to cheat the system, by bringing their brother's birth certificate, impersonate that, and when the real brother came to register, when that person put their fingerprint onto the fingerprint scanner, no picture came out."