Mon State is expected to have 170,000 more voters in next year’s general elections than it did when the country last went to the polls in 2015, according to the office of the state’s election commission.

“Overall, the number of voters will increase. We expect there will be at least 1.7 million voters in Mon State in the upcoming election,” Hein Lin Htet, a senior official with the Mon State Election Commission, told NMG, adding that the voters’ list is still not complete.

More than 1.53 million voters went to the polls in Mon State during the 2015 elections.

The election commission started making a list of eligible voters in Mon State on July 15. As of August 27, it had more than 560,000 names, or about 57 percent of the expected final figure. According to Hein Lin Htet, work on the list should be completed by the end of September.

The office of the state election commission said that 48 million kyat (US$32,000) had been budgeted for compiling the list.

Most of the increase was attributed to natural growth, as more young people reach the legal voting age of 18, while the addition of more migrant workers employed abroad was also seen as a contributing factor.

Migrants can be added to the list only after their eligibility has been confirmed. The Mon State commission said it was ready to make a voters’ list for soldiers if it is ordered to do so by the Union Election Commission (UEC).

Parties that will be contesting the elections next year say they expect the voter list to be more accurate than the one that was used in 2015.

“In previous elections, the list included dead people as eligible voters. If they can check these mistakes, I think the list will be more accurate this time,” Nai San Tin, the joint secretary-2 of the Mon Unity Party, told NMG.

The UEC said it would try to make a more accurate list of eligible voters for the 2020 general elections when it met with Mon political parties and other election-related organizations on July 9.