KHOTANG, June 19: With the objective of minimizing the number of invalid votes, the District Election Office (DEO), Khotang has added 25 more poll officials for the upcoming local elections scheduled for June 28.
As many as 25 people who are not associated with any political party were selected and given electoral training on Saturday by the Development Facilitation Network, Udayapur (DFNU). According to Roshna Karki, DFNU coordinator in Khotang, extremely high number of invalid votes in the first round of local elections has been a big warning for the officials.
She further informed that the DFNU has been conducting voters' education in the district in order to reduce the number of invalid votes. Officials having the minimum qualification of at least SEE certificate will be teaching the poor, illiterate women, the Dalits and the marginalized voters.
They will train them on how to cast votes with the help of model ballot papers. “There was an active participation of voters,” said coordinator Karki adding, “Large size of ballot paper complicated the voting process in the first round. So by conducting voters' education programs, we are trying to make the voters familiar with the ballot papers.”
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Earlier, the DEO had conducted electoral trainings and voters' education program in 173 polling centers of the district. Later, the DFNU continued with such trainings and programs with the financial help provided by UNDP. After the completion of the electoral training, poll officials will go to their respective election constituencies where they will be sharing their knowledge with the voters. Each official will have to teach at least 300 voters within June 27.
“Our main objective is to reduce the number of invalid votes and we don't want the vote of any locals to go wasted,” said Karki.
Poll officials are instructed to provide every single detail of the programs to DFNU mentioning the date, time and number of participants.
