2023 Elections: Your step-by-step guide as a first-time voter
As things stand, the 2023 general election is on track to break and set new records. According to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), 93,469,008 persons were certified to participate in the election after the mop-up exercise of its voters’ register.
The number is 9,464,924 or 11.3 per cent more than the 84,004,084 recorded in the 2019 general elections.
Many political analysts believe that the election will be decided by youths as there has been a large political interest in the demography. According to the electoral umpire, 37,060,399 or 39.65 per cent of voters are between the ages of 18 and 34. Many of them will be voting for the first time.
So you have your Permanent Voter’s Card (PVC) and you are ready to participate in your first election as both your right and civic duty. Congratulations.
Every election comes with slight changes in the process and 2023 own will not be different as the Independent National Electoral Commission has promised that BVAS will be deployed after successful trials during the Osun state governorship election in 2022.
BVAS is an electronic device designed to read PVCs and authenticate voters through fingerprint verification. It is designed to prove that the holder of the card is the right owner and duly eligible to vote at a particular polling unit.
As a first-time voter, here is the process of participating in your first election:
Accreditation
Accreditation begins by 8 am. In the past, the process of accreditation takes place first and after the last person in the queue has been attended to, voting will commence. Due to the deployment of BVAS, Both accreditation and voting will take place simultaneously.
When you get to the polling unit, you are expected to hand over your PVC to the Assistant Presiding Officer who will use the BVAS device to authenticate the validity of the card by scanning the QR code and also confirm that you are eligible to vote at that unit.
The officer will then verify that you are the real owner by authenticating your fingerprint or/and face. When this is done, you will then be allowed to vote.
Voting
After your identity has been verified, you will be given a ballot which will be stamped, signed and endorsed and referred to a voting cubicle to cast your ballot in private.
You will be given ink to stain either your thumb or index finger. You will then press the ink into the box in front of the part logo of the candidate you want to go for before putting it into the ballot box.
What next?
After voting, you can choose to leave. If you wish to stay till the end of the exercise, you can stay a few feets away from where the exercise is taking place.
Voting ends by 2 pm but anyone in the queue before that time will still be allowed to vote. After the last person has voted, INEC officials will sort the ballots into parties as well as rejected votes. There, the ballots will be counted and collated and the winner of the polling unit announced. With BVAS integrated into the IReV system which allows for results to be uploaded to the INEC server after collation at the polling units, voters can check the results in real-time on the INEC result portal.
