Approximately 63,500 deceased Cypriots are still listed on the country’s electoral register, while others who are listed as deceased seem to still vote in elections, according to electoral service boss Demetris Demetriou.

“The population record was developed in 2000 using the electronic electoral register and then information was added to the identity file without checking if those being registered were alive or not,” Demetriou told the Cyprus News Agency. The next step was to register the deceased according to the death archive but the death certificates did not include identity numbers, causing further complications.

“For example, in a specific community an individual called Andreas Andreou would die but there could be 5-10 people in the same community with the same name so when the process started, the deaths could not be filed causing problems,” Demetriou said. He also mentioned that during elections it seemed that certain people had been ‘resurrected’ after being falsely registered as deceased, while during the last Presidential elections two citizens who were recorded as deceased and had been deleted from the electoral roll turned up to vote.

Demetriou added that unfortunately the way the population record was developed it currently shows that there are 755,147 Greek Cypriots over the age of 18 who are alive.

“However, to give an example of the problem, about 63,500 of those citizens are over 100 years old, which is unrealistic.”

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