He said that it was difficult to conduct voter education programmes in the villages due to the limited staff of the Election Commission. <\/p>\n
He said, “Is it possible to go to all these employees and go from village to village and run voter education programs with the citizens? We have a position of seven people in each district. There are nine people in seven provinces, seven people in each district. That office is not about opening doors and working with the voters who have come to them. He said that even if he is not in a position to conduct voter education, he cannot shirk his responsibility. However, he said that there is still a clear way to take forward voter education effectively. <\/p>\n
‘Can we be deprived of our duty because we can’t do it anymore? No! But we have not figured out how to do it. It is the responsibility of the political parties. Or the government,” he said. <\/p>\n
He said that the Election Commission is coordinating with the Curriculum Development Center to include issues related to civic and electoral education at the school level. He said that even though it is included in the curriculum in some places, it has not provided adequate knowledge about elections to all the students. <\/p>\n
‘Even now, EVON has a branch in us, we show the video to the students of every school, college students, we make them voting officers, election officers, voters, candidates, all and rehearse there. And that’s how we do it, we take at least a three-hour class,” he said. <\/p>\n
He said that although the EC has been conducting voter education programs at the state and district levels, it is not enough to increase participation in voting and reduce invalid votes. He stressed that all sides including political parties, government, civil society, Chief District Officer and non-governmental organizations should work in coordination for this. <\/p>\n
“We need to increase the percentage of participation in voting and validating the invalid vote, it needs the participation of all of us. If all the political parties, government, civil society, CDOs, NGOs have an integrated approach, then we can achieve success in it,” he said. <\/p>\n
He said that political parties and candidates should also teach the voters how to vote correctly when they go door-to-door to ask for votes during elections. Stating that the Election Commission has put a model ballot paper on the website, he said that there is a need to explain to the voters how to stamp the ballot papers and how the vote is valid and under what circumstances. <\/p>\n
Karki also said that a significant number of votes were invalid as two symbols were stamped on the same ballot paper for the first-past-the-post election to the House of Representatives. <\/p>\n
“In this time, it is noteworthy that the House of Representatives has put double the number of votes, more than 80 percent of the votes have been invalid,” he said. <\/p>\n
He said that it is equally important to increase the participation of citizens in voting. He said that due to the cost, time and family management involved in going to vote in remote districts, voters are not able to participate in voting. He said that some voters stay at home thinking that participation in voting does not guarantee that the candidate they support will win. He said that the election system and the cost of voting are also affecting the participation. <\/p>\n
} “No matter how much we talk, no matter how much we say, if the participation of the people is not increased to the maximum, then we are not considered to be the right representation,” he said. <\/p>\n
Stressing on the need of addressing the participation of people with disabilities in the election in a more special way, Karki said voter education and civic education should be promoted jointly. <\/p>\n
‘How can both voter education and participation, civic education be done? We should jointly discuss and bring a program,” he said, “It will work in the joint effort of both, now if it is done in the joint effort of all of us.” He also said that the necessary methods and procedures should be developed for the improvement of the electoral system and the proper use of voting rights. He said that although the resources are available for the conduct of elections, capacity building is necessary to make effective use of them. <\/p>\n
He said that the existing technical standards related to ballot papers were not possible in the local printing press. <\/p>\n
‘Why can’t we do this because of the current requirement that we have on the ballot? We have made it so complicated,” he said. <\/p>\n
Karki stressed on the need of collaboration among all sides concerned to ensure the meaningful participation of citizens in the election, reduce invalid votes and ease the exercise of voting rights of persons with disabilities. <\/p>\n
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<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Invalid votes have increased due to complex election system: Chief Election Commissioner Karki Kathmandu Chief Election Commissioner Man Bahadur Karki has said that the number of invalid votes has increased due to the complexity of Nepal’s election system. Speaking at the inauguration and planning workshop of the ‘Inclusion’ Project in Kathmandu on Tuesday, he stressedContinue reading “Invalid votes increased due to complex election system: CEC Karki”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":115122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-samachar-en"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/photo-3_cc087969.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115137"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115138,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115137\/revisions\/115138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/media\/115122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}