The Fijian Elections Office has concluded the 2017 Overseas Voter Registration Drive with only Nauru, the United Kingdom and the East Coast of the United States left to be covered before the end of the year.
The FEO teams covered Canada, the West Coast of the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Marshall Islands, Malaysia and Korea from October 3 and November 6, 2017.
Teams were sent directly to these countries so that they could carry out registrations at key events organized by the Fijian communities mostly surrounding the Fiji Day celebrations.
Whilst there were certain difficulties that were faced by the teams including but not limited to lack of passports or unavailability of the exact requirements for registration, we still managed to register a total of 696 new voters.
The FEO also during these exercises managed to provide voter election services to up to 2900 Fijians.
A breakdown is provided below:
|
COUNTRY |
NEW REGISTRATIONS |
CORRECTIONS | REPLACEMENT | ENQUIRIES | TOTAL ENGAGEMENT |
| Canada | 13 | 11 | 3 | 72 | 99 |
| United States of America | 274 | 245 | 36 | 331 | 886 |
| New Zealand | 212 | 184 | 102 | 469 | 967 |
| Australia | 159 | 178 | 41 | 358 | 736 |
| Marshall Islands | 16 | 51 | 0 | 55 | 122 |
| Malaysia | 8 | 18 | 0 | 35 | 61 |
| Korea | 14 | 7 | 5 | 3 | 29 |
| TOTAL | 696 | 694 | 187 | 1323 | 2900 |
During the Pacific Islands Countries Registration Drive, a total of 1060 voters were serviced in Tonga, Kiribati, Cook Islands, Tuvalu, American Samoa, Western Samoa, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Australia.
Teams were also sent to the Pacific Island Countries between March 17 and May 16, 2017 to ensure that Fijian in our neighboring nations are able to register to cast their vote.
Voter Services to these countries included 616 new registrations, 405 corrections to details and 39 obtained the replacement Voter2.0 Card.
A breakdown is provided below:
| COUNTRY |
NEW REGISTRATIONS |
CORRECTIONS | REPLACEMENT | TOTAL ENGAGEMENT |
| Tonga | 155 | 25 | 6 | 186 |
| Kiribati | 27 | 10 | 6 | 43 |
| Cook Islands | 174 | 124 | 0 | 298 |
| American Samoa | 124 | 70 | 1 | 195 |
| Western Samoa | 53 | 22 | 11 | 86 |
| Vanuatu | 31 | 41 | 5 | 77 |
| PNG | 17 | 72 | 10 | 99 |
| Solomon Islands | 4 | 9 | 0 | 13 |
| Tuvalu | 9 | 32 | 0 | 41 |
| Australia | 22 | 0 | 0 | 22 |
| TOTAL | 616 | 405 | 39 | 1060 |
Director Operations Anaseini Senimoli in her remarks mentioned that despite the fact that we continued a lot awareness since last year, some members of the community were not able to bring all the required documents and we were not able to register them.
“Any person who wishes to still register may have to now do so in Fiji as registration overseas is not likely to be conducted until later next year,” she said.
Persons who will be voting by post will need to wait for the announcement of the Election date to register for Postal Voting.
The FEO would like to thank the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other stakeholders for their assistance in the coordination of logistics and other facilitation in host countries.
-Ends-
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