Nogat Nem: The electoral roll in Papua New Guinea’s national elections

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The difficulties with Papua New Guinea’s electoral roll are not limited to ‘missing names’. There is also a serious issue that voter identification processes are frequently degenerate or absent. Voting without identification, in turn, has important effects on the logic of electoral politics. In this presentation, we show that (known) turnout figures and enrolments are in many cases implausible. We contextualise this by mapping observations of 744 polling locations in the 2022 national general election, noting that high turnouts occur in areas in which voter identification is frequently absent. We then consider surveys conducted after the 2012, 2017 and 2022 elections which directly ask respondents if they are on the roll, and if they voted. After assessing the complexities of interpretation inherent in these questions, we show that the association between them is looser in the areas with implausible turnouts and enrolments. For the 2022 election, we show that survey measures have a tight relationship with direct observations of roll use, and its absence. Whilst our interpretation of the survey-side association prevents direct measure of the degree to which there is compliance with the roll, it suggests weak and waning compliance. Finally, we offer some interpretations of the likely consequences of this.

Speaker

Thiago Oppermann is an anthropologist specialising in the history and social organisation of Bougainville, and electoral politics in Melanesia. He participated in DPA-led election observations of the PNG national elections in 2017 and 2022, Solomon Islands in 2019 and 2024, and the Autonomous Bougainville Government elections of 2015.