Malawi Electoral Comission (MEC) has on Thursday February 6,2025 released its voter register for the 16 September,2025 general elections,urging women to contest in large numbers.
The registration figures for all phases including supplementary voter registration show that women continue dominating the voter register in all the elections in Malawi with, out of 7,200,905 total registrants,4,113,342 million are women and 3,087,563 million are men,representing 57.1 and 42.9 percent respectively to vote come September 16,2025.
According to the public statement released on Thursday, February 6,2025 MEC says it had a projection of 10,959,490 million potential registrants who spin from age 16 and above by 16 September 2025 ,the figure it (MEC) got from the National Statical Office (NSO).
The statement,has emphasised that slight changes may occur to figures which include the 24,078 captured during the supplementary registration.
The statement further said that MEC had to conduct a supplimentary voter registration after some comcerned citizens sued the Comission and government through the office of the Arttoney General Thabo Chakaka Nyirenda after noting that some registration centers were not captured properly.
Following the court ruling MEC was made to go back to some registration centers where the national registration bureau did not deploy its staff to provide citizens with idecation number to be used for voter registration.
“Slight changes make occur to the figures as data cleaning continues”,reads part of the statement.
If the projection is something to go by,the registration process has missed 2,059,116 million male and 1,697,469 million female eligible voters for the September 16 local government, parliamentary and presidential elections.
Commenting on the development, MEC Director of Media and Public Relations Sangwani Mwafulirwa says the dominance of women in the voter register in all elections in Malawi has been a trend which can be attributed to the demographic issue, whereby the majority of the population are women and that there is also observable trend that more women tend to turn up for polling than men .
“We have orbserved that there are always more women registering as voters than men in all elections that we have been having in the country. This could be a demographic issues whereby the majority of the population are women. But there is also observable trend that more women tend to turn up for polling than men”,said Mwafulirwa .
Mwafulirwa said in the wake of this development MEC wishes that women could take another step by coming forward to contest as candidates.
“While women tend to be majority in registration, they are very few that partcipate in elections as candidates. This requires all stakeholders to pull their efforts together especially political parties where the candidates are always coming from”, he said.
He pointed out that on its part the Commission has given a discount on nomination fees just to encourage women to stand in elections especially on local government and parliamentary posts,where women contesting as members of Parliament will be required to pay Mk1,250,000.00 (57.64 USDs) and k2,500,000.00 (721 USDs)for male candidates.Those contesting as councillors will pay Mk100,000.00 (57.64 USSDs,half of what their male counterparts will pay.Those contesting on the presidential position will pay ten million Kwacha (5,767 USSDs) regardless of gender.