General News of Friday, 7 August 2020

Source: www.ghanaweb.com

No new voters register in the foreseeable future – EC

Electoral Commission of Ghana play videoElectoral Commission of Ghana

The Deputy Chairman of Corporate Services at the Electoral Commission (EC), Dr Bossman Asare, has anticipated that there will be no new compilation of a voters register in the foreseeable future.

According to him, the Commission predicts that in future register compilations which will only pertain to additions, all applicants will be required to present their identity documents such as; Passport and the ‘Ghana Card’.

Speaking at the eighth edition of the ‘Let the Citizen Know’ series on Friday, August 7, Dr Asare said; “In future register compilations, everyone will come with the identity documents which is the Passport and ‘Ghana Card’ and we will make everything possible for that. The de-duplication process has been triggered and all those who do not qualify to be on the voters roll will be removed”

“We the [EC] are doing everything possible to ensure that we have a register that is very credible in order not to come back to the citizenry for another compilation of a register and this Commission has made that point very clear that it is only going to be adding on to the new voters register so there will be no new voters register, at least in the next foreseeable future,” Dr. Asare explained.

So far, the biometric data of 16,663,669 persons has been captured by the Electoral Commission (EC) in the just ended compilation exercise of a new voters register. This was revealed by the EC as the recorded figures as at August 6, 2020 ahead of the December 7 polls.

According to the Commission, the nationwide provisional figures since its last briefing has seen the top four regions maintain their positions.

The compilation of a new voters register by the Electoral Commission (EC) commenced on June 30, 2020 and ended on August 6, 2020 across all the districts in the country.

Although the EC projected registering 15 million eligible voters, the latest provisional figures show the electoral body has surpassed its projections.

Meanwhile, the EC says it is giving another opportunity to those who, in one way or the other could not avail themselves to register during the nationwide exercise, to do so this weekend. This will be done in a mop-up exercise on Saturday and Sunday 8 and 9 August 2020 at its district offices across the country.

Additionally, the Commission has inaugurated a voter registration adjudication committee to help expunge the names of multiple registrants from the voter register.

The 16-member multi-stakeholder committee, which was inaugurated by the Chairperson of the EC, Mrs Jean Mensa, in Accra Wednesday, 5 August 2020, will be required to manually determine the eligibility of persons who have been flagged for multiple registration through the de-duplication process to be on the voter roll.