The Fijian Elections Office [FEO] today piloted its āSMS Notification Featureā that has now been incorporated into the Voter Registration system. 2,502 voters who had either registered or updated their details between January 2017 and 20 March 2017 and had provided the FEO with their mobile numbers would have received a āconfirmationā sms advising them of the registration.
āWe are currently testing the system so that the FEO can directly communicate with the registered individual,ā remarked Mr. Mohammed Saneem, Supervisor of Elections.
āElection Management Bodies around the world continuously try to find avenues to directly engage with voters and since mobile phones are very popular in Fiji, the FEO has taken advantage of this medium,ā continued Mr. Saneem. āLater on, we will trial other means of communication such as email.ā
The āSMS Notification Featureā will allow the FEO to confirm to voters in terms of their registration as a Voter. The system will also send an sms to a voter when the voter updates their details. Finally the system will also sms a voter to advise the voter that their VoterCard has been replaced.
In terms of security, voters will now have access to information about the activity on their Registration and in the unlikely event that unauthorized activities took place, the Voter can raise queries with the FEO.
āThe FEO has created this tool as a transparency mechanism and I invite all Registered Voters to subscribe to this featureā Mr. Saneem said.
The SMS Notification feature operates on both the networks in Fiji and is a free of charge service.
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Please forward all media queries to the FEO Communications team at communications@localhost
Caption: A screenshot of a trial SMS Notification that was sent out by the FEO today.
