the voter lists are out!

Unlike in the United States, every citizen of the Maldives who is over the age of 18 is automatically registered to vote. In order to show who can vote, the country has published a book with a list of all eligible Maldivian citizens. The problem with this is that since no one actually has made an affort to be on or off the list. there may be dead people on it, or living people missing from it.

To combat this accuracy problem, the government has released the list to the public for the next two weeks so they can look at it, and report any problems on a hotline. The lists are at the district offices. The offices do not make it easy to check. Some of them don't even know if they have it or not, and you have to make a point of asking for it at those that do. Here is a reporter doing a standup at one of the district offices in Male.

The other problem with this system is that a person's name is posted only in the the book of the atoll where he or she was born, but they can vote anywhere in the in country.
Maldivians living outside the country will not be able to vote in this election unless they physically travel to the Maldives. The country is simply not organized enough to have an absentee ballot system. I get the feeling that the majority of expatriates are against President Gayoom , so despite the level of disorganization, I wonder if the there are no absentee ballots, in part because the sitting government has not made it a priority.