The National Electoral Authority (French acronym A.N.E.) finally published on Wednesday 14 October, with the support of the UNDP CAR Election Support Project (PAPEC), the provisional voters’ lists in the capital as well as in the rest of the country. In the enrolment centres, some voters did not see their names on the lists posted by ANE or noticed they were incorrectly transcribed. Corrections are performed at the Data treatment Center.
The role of the electoral assistance project at this stage of the electoral process was key. An IT specialist was deployed to the Data Processing Centre (French acronym, centre de traitement des données, CTD) in September in order to build the capacity of the technicians who worked hard to digitalise the data. More part time technicians were also recruited to speed up the process of voters’ lists publication. Finally, a communication campaign supporting the National Elections Authority was launched on the main radio stations of the country as well as in the Print media and mobile phones in order to invite voters to settle disputes.
Article 87 of the Central African Republic’s Electoral Code states that disputes over registration on the electoral roll may lead to informal appeals to the ANE by filing claims for correction starting from the publication date of the provisional amendments to the lists, as well as through judicial procedures.
Following the publication of the lists, the decree convening the electorate to the polls was issued on 27 October 2020. The first round of voting will take place on 27 December 2020 and the election campaign will start on 12 December 2020.
The filing of candidates’ application started took place from 1 to 10 November 2020.
Twenty two applications were received by A.N.E for the presidential race while 1572 applications were recorded for the legislative elections. All applications were transmitted to the Constitutional Court that has the legal mandate to examine the eligibility of candidates and issue a final list for each poll on or before 3 December.