ISLAMABAD: By-elections held on Sunday in the eight constituencies of National Assembly and three seats of Punjab Assembly witnessed low voter turnout and election code violations.
“With only 35% of the registered voters turning out on election day, constituencies remained peaceful with scattered instances of irregularities,” Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) reported on Oct 17.
According to FAFEN report, the voter turnout remained low compared to the General Elections (GE) 2018. The male turnout declined from 57.3% in GE-2018 to 39.5% in the by-polls, while the female turnout dropped from 45.0% to 29.7%.
In absolute numbers, 470,890 fewer voters turned out to vote in comparison to 1,962,800 voters in GE-2018.
The report said the highest voter turnout (53.3%) was recorded in PP-209 Khanewal-VII and the lowest (14.8%) in NA-239 Korangi Karachi-I.
“The lowest female turnout, 10.4 percent was recorded in NA-31 Peshawar-V, raising the need for the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to look into the reasons in the spirit of Section 9 of the Elections Act, 2017.”
As many as four constituencies had less than 20% female turnout compared to one with a male turnout below 20%, the election observers said.
FAFEN said that the voters’ turnout remained “especially abysmal” in two Karachi constituencies — NA-239 Korangi Karachi-I and NA-237 Malir-II — where cumulatively 17.6%% of the registered voters exercised their right to vote compared to 27.4% turnout in three KP constituencies and 44.8% in six Punjab constituencies.
