The National Orientation Agency (NOA) flagged off voter education campaigns in Oyo and Katsina States on 17th January 2019, to ensure that the electorate understood the importance of the issues relating to void or invalid votes. In a theme tagged: “What void, invalid votes mean”, NOA seeks to trigger a maximum reduction of void votes. According to the agency, the awareness campaign is part of voter education programmes to “eliminate high incident of wasteful votes during elections,” as well as the “incessant occurrence of void, rejected and invalid votes witnessed during past elections. These according to NOA, constituted “a menace and a stumbling block toward advancing the nation’s electoral system in aligning with global best practices”.
During the course of the campaign, the electorate were informed that void votes occur when: “A voter thumb-prints on a party’s logo instead of the box provided, thumb printing in an unclear manner or casting a blank ballot paper. Others are smearing the ballot paper with ink, thumb-printing in an unclear manner, squeezing the ballot paper or writing/ signing on it.”
In addition to being educated about what constitutes a void or invalid vote, women in Katsina State, were told to ensure that they do not apply henna on their thumbs, during the election period to make it easier to be captured by the card readers.