Competitive elections are the main devices whereby officials are rendered accountable to popular control. They also constitute an important arena for ensuring political equality between citizens both in access to public office and in the value of their votes. Therefore, the criteria FOR FREE and fair elections embraces for the first instance the electoral system i.e. the law governing which offices are to be voted for, who may stand for them, where elections are to be held, who may vote, how constituencies are to be defined, how votes are to be aggregated to select the winners and so on.

Second is the electoral process, i.e. how individual elections are conducted in practice from the initial registration of voters throughout the campaign to the counting of the ballot to ensure that the law is strictly and impartially applied and that there are no malpractices to throw the results.

Helping to choose a government and to elect representatives is a civic duty as well as a right, which past generations have struggled to achieve. Choosing to register as a voter is therefore a necessary precondition for a person’s name to be on an electoral register and the qualification to vote. Once an electoral register is prepared, it can be used for other legitimate electoral processes and if one is not registered, one cannot vote in such elections.

In pursuit of their mandate, the Commission embarks on massive voter/civic education in ORDER for the voting populace to understand the issues to enable them vote en masse.
Both conventional and non-conventional methods are used with specific target groups borne in mind.