The Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) announced on Friday that voter registration on the electoral roll will start on Monday, July 20, 2026, in the main towns of nine of the country’s geographic departments, except for the West department.
The Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) announced on Friday that voter registration operations on the electoral roll will start on Monday, July 20, 2026, in the main towns of nine geographical departments of the country, except for the West department.
Because Port-au-Prince, the capital of the West department, is largely controlled by armed groups, the Electoral Council is forced to delay the start of voter registration in this municipality.This decision, the CEP notes in a statement, “takes into account the particular constraints currently prevailing in the West department. To this end, the CEP intends to continue assessing the situation in the most appropriate way, with a view to gradually expanding registration operations in that department and in all the municipalities of the other departments, under acceptable conditions of security, accessibility, and efficiency.”The Provisional Electoral Council is therefore inviting citizens to go to the Registration and Voting Centers (CIV), with their valid national ID card, to complete the registration procedures on the electoral roll.
The electoral decree is clear in its Article 59.1: “Registration is mandatory to exercise the right to vote.” Starting Monday, July 20, the population will have 90 days to register at voting centers across the country to participate in the upcoming elections, an electoral advisor told Nouvelliste. Those who are not registered will not be able to vote, he added.Currently, most members of the Provisional Electoral Council are deployed in different departments to prepare for the launch of voter registrations on Monday, July 20, a council advisor told the newspaper over the phone on Friday. ‘Registrations will take place for 90 days at the voting centers, and citizens must appear in person,’ our source at the PEC explained, noting that the necessary materials have already been sent to the departments.She emphasized that this start of voter registration will take place “in all the municipalities and municipal sections where the electoral institution’s staff can operate safely and which are accessible to the population. It should be noted that nearly 23 municipalities spread across the West, Artibonite, and Central departments are considered occupied by armed groups. This operation will take place in all the registration and voting centers (CIV) selected by the CEP following the evaluation of the voting centers.”
According to our source at the CEP, “the start of voter registration is gradual across the territory. The opening of registration and voting centers happens in waves, depending on the delivery of materials to the centers.”If in its databases the National Identification Office (ONI) has more than 6.5 million people of voting age, voter registrations, according to this election advisor, will allow the electoral institution to clean up the voter register in order to know the exact number of voters.
“Citizens can register at the polling center closest to their home or at the polling center in the district where they plan to vote. There are no predefined centers. But on election day, they will only be able to vote at the polling center where they are registered. Since a polling center consists of several polling stations, the CEP will later inform the voter which polling station they can vote at,” the election advisor explained to Le Nouvelliste.What about voters in the diaspora?
At the time of this interview, our source at the CEP was not yet able to say for sure how registrations for Haitian voters living abroad would be handled. However, they point out that the Electoral Council is considering the possibility of opening voting centers in consulates. But nothing has been finalized yet.
For the upcoming elections, only compatriots living in Canada, France, and the United States will be able to participate, considered as a pilot project, according to Haitian authorities.According to Article 59 of the electoral decree published on June 2, 2026, in Le Moniteur, “the citizen must appear in person at the Registration and Voting Center (CIV) with a valid National ID Card (CIN) or the identification certificate issued on request by the ONI, which includes the Unique National Identification Number (NINU) and their photo, in order to register on the electoral roll according to voter registration procedures.”
