Drive to verify voters' identity from August 22

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has refined the voters' lists and decided to introduce water marked ballot papers in the upcoming general election.
"This effort is being made to stop fraudulent votes and double voting in the next elections, new computerised voters' lists will be issued without pictures however the presiding officer will have lists which contain pictures. NADRA had provided the Election Commission with voters' lists of over 800 million people. A door-to-door campaign to verify the identity of the voters would start from August 22," Secretary Election Commission Ishtiaq Ahmed said at a news conference here on Saturday.
He said new lists would carry pictures of the voters and their thumb prints would be magnetised making it impossible to cast vote by person other than the genuine voter or double casting of the votes. He said computerised electoral rolls would prevent the duplicate entries of votes. The new lists would be handed over to National Database Registration Authority (NADRA) after door-to-door verification is completed by December 2011, he added.
The final electoral rolls would be published in March, Ahmed said. The Deputy Chairman of NADRA, Tariq Malik informed the media that 150 million people were not identified in the old voters' list, while 1.2 million had fake identities and 2.5 million had duplicate identities.
After the verification process the voters' lists will be handed over to NADRA and the final lists will be issued in March. The Secretary added that after the new voters' lists are completed repeat entries will not be possible thus pictures will not be included. ECP Secretary said that Printing Corporation of Pakistan has been asked to print water marked ballot papers. ECP was pursuing a mission to plug loopholes in the country's electoral system and to prepare transparent and authentic voters' lists, rule of ballot not bullet would be ensured in the country.
In next elections new computerised voters' lists will be issued without pictures; however the presiding officer will have lists which contain pictures of the voters. Enabling environment is being provided to citizens to cost their votes without any coercion. Fake or dual voting has been made impossible. Transparent voters' list would lead to make country as prosperous, he said.
The electoral rolls have already been distributed in 130 districts. The country has already been divided in to 140,000 census blocks. After the verification process the voters' lists will be handed over to NADRA and the final lists will be issued in March.
The final voter list would be printed in March 2012. And new elections would be held in accordance with the list. A voter would be allowed to cast his vote at permanent or temporary address. Due to NADRA's unique identifier it has been made impossible for a person to cast dual vote as the system would automatically detect the cheater, he said.
After the issuance of the final voters' lists, a mechanism would also be in place to register the vote of each and every new Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC) holder. NADRA will handover the data of each new CNIC holder to ECP for onward inclusion in the voters' list after scrutiny.
Regarding forceful prevention of women to cast vote in some districts, he said an amendment has been proposed in the constitution to defer the announcement of the result of entire constituency if less than 20 percent vote polled in any women polling station. Regarding the verification of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) he said Ministry of States and Frontier Region (SAFRON) has been asked to provide the list of IDPs for onward verification.