Over 20,000 new voters eligible for May 2016 elections

Electoral rolls will see the number of people eligible to vote increase by 23,000 – a record number, the interior ministry election service said on Thursday in light of the upcoming parliamentary elections in May 2016.

Chief Returning Officer Demetris Demetriou told the Cyprus News Agency 13,000 letters would be sent on Monday to people born between 1995 and 1997. The other 10,000 would be sent at the beginning of January next year.

“Certainly it is a large number of new voters this time taking in consideration that after the last presidential elections, the registrations in the electoral role are minimal between 150 to 300 new registrations every three months,” he said.

The election service will be meeting with party representatives on November 16 to begin discussions.

Demetriou added that although some issues were expected to come up with people using either their ID or their voting booklet it was not going to be an overwhelming problem.

“Using one or the other was something we did for European Parliament elections. The problems were not seen to a huge extent due to the low participation.”

The last parliamentary elections in 2011 saw some 535,000 people vote while presidential elections had close to 545,500 voters.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.