Bedoui: « No Electronic Voting Operations In Algeria Before Five Years »

The Minister of the Interior and Local Assemblies, Noureddine Bedoui, stated Monday in Algiers that the revamping of the organic law on the electoral system is aimed at adapting the legal framework of future elections to the recently amended Constitution.

While expounding the relevant bill before the Council of the Nation’s members ahead of its examining, Mr Bedoui said that the bill is intended to “adapt the text governing elections with the new provisions comprised in the Constitution which was amended in February 2016.” 

He also affirmed that projected electronic voting during the next elections won’t be introduced in Algeria before five years in order to guarantee the smooth running of this voting procedure in due time notably through the intensive dissemination of the biometric ID cards for citizens and the gradual digitization of the election file for that purpose.

The Algerian constitution “crowned the process of reforms endorsed by the President of the Republic Abdelaziz Bouteflika”, he underlined.

The new reforms contained in the revised Constitution led to the revamping of the country’s electoral system bill in force through the introduction of provisions guaranteeing integrity and transparency of voting operations and the creation of a high Independence body for monitoring elections at all stages,” emphasized the interior minister.

It’s worth recalling that the bill on the electoral system includes 225 articles.

Meanwhile, the speeches of several members of the Council of the Nation were devoted at Monday’s plenary session to the draft law on the electoral system with on focus Articles 73 and 94 which require from political parties to have secured at least 4% of votes in previous elections, while asking to clarify the fate of those political parties officially agreed after the year 2012.

After hailing the text which they described as a “qualitative leap forward in the enshrinement of effective political action”, the senators wondered if the rate fixed in Article 73 “shall apply whether or not to the new parties and to independent lists that participated in previous elections. “

They also requested explanations from the relevant authorities about “the reasons why the latter chose the 2012 parliamentary elections as a criterion for defining the rate of 4%” saying this issue must be clarified.

Regarding Article 81 which states that personal municipalities are ineligible for the exercise of their functions for a period of one year after leaving office, they wondered what the relevant election-related article meant by “personnel of municipalities.”

To ensure the regularity of the electoral process, a senator proposed to give each voter a national number, to proceed with the immediate removal of deceased voters from voter registration and issuing new voter cards to citizens who have changed place of residence within the relocation operations in some provinces of the country.

The MPs also called for the defining of the conditions to be met by heads of offices and polling centers during the next voting operations.