The Civic and Voter Education (CVE) Directorate is the outreach arm of the Commission responsible for promoting public awareness and conducting civic education on electoral matters up to the grassroots level. It is the Commission’s interface hub to electoral stakeholders most of which are the electorate. It is responsible for formulating strategies, methods, programmes and incorporating stakeholder recommendations throughout planning, implementation and evaluation of CVE activities.

The overall goal of the CVE Directorate is to maintain a high level of public participation in the electoral processes through empowerment, awareness, knowledge dissemination and skills impartation to ensure credible elections. It has the following objectives:

• Maintaining a high-level voter turn-out and seek to achieve national rate of less than 3.5% for null and void votes;
• Improving the quality and delivery of civic and voter education;
• Identifying, assessing and confirming existing civic and voter education providers with respect to their capacity and quality;
• Accrediting CSOs and facilitating their voter education operations;
• Advocating for information campaigns for women, youth and other vulnerable groups;

The department oversees and facilitates the work of accredited civic and voter education providers while ensuring non-partisan civic and voter education is provided to the general public. It also delivers civic and voter education to the electorate using various means such outreach meetings with traditional leaders and their people, meetings with religious leaders, public beaming of electoral video documentaries, roadshows, drama outreach, traditional dance competitions, mobilization using loudhailers, community soccer bonanzas, social media educative videos (animated), SMS texts, vehicle branding, roadside paintings etc.

The Directorate also produces and distributes posters, brochures, banners, fliers, leaflets and other IEC materials.

Its operational activities are guided by the Civic and Voted Education Strategy developed in 2018 with technical and financial support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The Media and Civic and Voter Education (MCVE) Committee of the Commission exercises oversight of the Directorate on behalf of the Commission.

During elections period, the Directorate, apart from working with civil society organisations, also collaborates with various government ministries, departments and agencies such as the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of National Unity, the Ministry of Information, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Department of Road Traffic and Safety Services among others.

 The Directorate is headed by the Director of Civic and Voter Education and has eight permanent staff members: three at the head office, two each at the South and Central Regional offices and one in the North. During elections the directorate engages Constituency Civic and Voter Education Assistants and are deployed to every constituency to provide civic and voter education at the grassroots level as well as monitor stakeholder implementation of civic and voter education.