Before you can choose a president, a senator, a deputy or a local official, there is a more basic question: are you on the electoral list? For a whole generation of Haitians this is the first election of their adult lives, and it begins long before 13 December, with identification, registration and verification. Three steps, and each one has a deadline.
In short
To vote in this cycle you must be Haitian and eighteen years of age, hold a valid CIN, be entered on the electoral register, and enjoy your civil and political rights (decree, art. 55; Constitution, arts. 16-2 and 17). Registration is not optional, the decree states plainly that registration is compulsory for the exercise of the right to vote (art. 59.1). Registration runs from 20 July to 13 October 2026 at the CEP's registration and voting centres (CIV). The electoral lists are published on 13 November 2026, thirty days before the vote, at the BEC and BED offices and on the CEP's website (arts. 62 and 71). Check your name and your assigned centre, do not wait until election day to find out that something is wrong.
Step 1, Have a valid CIN
The Carte d'Identification Nationale (CIN), issued by the Office national d'identification (ONI), is the key to the whole process: no valid CIN, no registration, no ballot. If you have never had one, or yours is lost or expired, your first stop is an ONI office.
By law, the first issue of the CIN is free (decree of 1 June 2005), and the ONI has publicly reminded citizens that no fee may be demanded for obtaining it. Fees for renewal or replacement are a matter for the budget law and are not published, and informal charges are widely reported, if someone asks you for money for a first card, they are asking for something the law does not allow.
One detail that saves people: the decree accepts, in place of the card itself, an identification attestation issued on request by the ONI bearing your NINU and your photograph (art. 59). If your card is in production, that attestation is what you register with.
Your CIN is more than an election document, it is your national identity card, used for banking, contracts and administrative business. But for this process its role is exact: it identifies you as the person being entered on the register.
Step 2, Register at a CIV
Having a CIN does not put you on the list. You must also register, and you must do it in person.
The register is built from the ONI's civil-registry database and consists of every Haitian citizen with electoral capacity assigned to a voting centre (art. 57). The CEP establishes registration and voting centres (CIV) across the territory for that purpose (art. 58). You present yourself in person with your valid CIN, or the ONI attestation, and your details are recorded (art. 59).
Registration opened on 20 July 2026, initially in the chief towns of nine departments, and was progressively extended, including 19 additional CIVs announced in the Ouest on 7 August and a further 32 on 13 August. It closes on 13 October 2026.
The detail that matters more than it looks: the centre where you register is the centre where you will vote. Register where you actually intend to be on election day. If you move house, the decree requires you to present yourself at the registration centre for your new address so the lists can be updated (art. 64).
Step 3, Verify your name on the list
Registration is not the finish line. The CEP prepares a General Electoral List and, from it, lists by commune, by communal section, by voting centre and by voting bureau (art. 69).
Two deadlines govern what you can still fix:
- Sixty days before the vote, entries close. After that the general list is final and no further update is possible (art. 61). For 13 December, that door shut in mid-October.
- Thirty days before the vote, the lists must be sent to the BEC and BED offices to be made public and posted (art. 62), and the CEP publishes the corrected list by posting and on its website (art. 71). That is 13 November 2026.
So take ten minutes and check two things: that your name is there, and which voting centre you have been assigned to. A voter who discovers a problem on 13 December discovers it too late.
Who can vote, and who cannot
Every Haitian aged eighteen or over may exercise their civil and political rights (Constitution, art. 17; majority is set at eighteen by art. 16-2), and the Constitution counts voting among the civic duties of the citizen (art. 52-1). The decree restates the same conditions operationally at art. 55.
The exclusions are narrow and all judicial. Voter status is lost for the same reasons citizenship is lost, and it is suspended for as long as one of these lasts: a final conviction to an afflictive or infamous penalty, a conviction for electoral fraud that has become final, a fraudulent bankruptcy established by a final judgment, or any other cause provided by law (art. 56). Names are removed from the register on the ONI's data when a person has died or been placed under legal incapacity (art. 65), and prosecutors transmit lists of those convicted of afflictive or infamous penalties through the justice ministry for removal (arts. 66 and 67).
The distinction worth holding on to: citizenship gives you the right; registration makes the right usable at the polling station.
What about Haitians living abroad?
This changed for this cycle, and the change is widely misunderstood. The decree does provide for Haitians living abroad to vote, on the constitutional ratification and for the President only, in diaspora communities identified by the CEP (art. 384). But the places and the procedures are left to an order in the Council of Ministers that has not been published (art. 385), so no registration channel abroad has opened.
A member of the diaspora who obtained a CIN, registered at a CIV during the registration period and is in Haiti on polling day votes exactly like anyone else, for every office. Read: Can the diaspora vote?
Three mistakes to avoid
- Assuming a CIN means you are registered. Identification and electoral registration are two separate steps, done at two different institutions.
- Assuming you can vote anywhere. The CEP assigns you to a centre and a bureau. Turning up at the wrong building is not a technicality you can talk your way out of.
- Registering somewhere you will not be. Your registration centre is your polling place. Choose it for December, not for July.
Questions people ask
Is it too late to register?
Not yet. Registration for 13 December runs until 13 October 2026, after which the general list is definitive and no update is possible (art. 61). See Step 2, Register at a CIV.
My CIN is lost, expired, or I never had one. What do I do?
Go to an ONI office. The first issue of the CIN is free by law, and the decree also accepts an ONI attestation carrying your NINU and photograph in place of the card itself (art. 59). See Step 1, Have a valid CIN.
Can I register somewhere other than where I will vote?
No, and this catches people out: the centre where you register is the centre where you vote. If you move house, present yourself at the registration centre for your new address (art. 64). See Three mistakes to avoid.
What if my name is missing from the list?
Challenges about a voter's inscription or radiation are heard by the BCEC of your commune, which decides within 24 hours (arts. 306 and 315). Read: Your name is not on the electoral list
Your election starts before election day
The striking thing about registration is how quiet it is. No crowd, no campaign, no ballot box, you simply put your identification in order, register, and check your name.
But without those steps none of the choices described anywhere else in this library reach you. The president, the senators, the deputies, the mayors, the CASEC and ASEC members are all chosen by the people who got through this first part of the process.
Get your CIN. Register. Check your name. Know your centre. Democracy does not begin when you step into the booth. It begins with making sure you can get there.