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The Electoral Commission (EC) has tasked the Board of Directors with making the necessary arrangements to ensure that vulnerable voters (the sick, the elderly, pregnant women, nursing mothers and people with disabilities) do not join the queues at polling stations.
“All vulnerable voters should be given preferential treatment at the polling station, they should not be allowed to join long lines, and voters with unidentifiable disabilities, such as the deaf, may be in the company of others who will ask the President to they are also given priority ”, stated the EC.
The EC in its “2020 Election Manual – Voter Guide”, available to the Ghana News Agency, identified other people for preferential treatment as visually impaired people; Physically disarmed; people with hearing disabilities, people living with albinism, low syndrome and any other category of disability that is detected in the center.
Mr. Kwame Amoah, EC Greater Accra Regional Director in an interview with the GNA, explained that all polling stations would be located in places that are easily accessible to all voters.
He said that the Board of Directors has instructions to locate all polling stations in low-level areas to facilitate voting for vulnerable people, such as the sick, pregnant, elderly, nursing mothers and People with Disabilities (especially people with disabilities in wheelchairs. wheels).
“All polling stations should be located in low-level areas, existing polling stations that are on terraces, across gutters or anywhere that prevents the free movement of voters should be relocated to a more accessible area,” he explained.
To ensure that visually impaired people vote independently, Amoah said the EC has made provisions for tactile ballots; “A tactile jacket is a cardboard folder with raised dots arranged numerically to represent the positions of the candidates on the ballot.
“Also, each number arrangement is a corresponding window, which is large enough to accommodate the thumb for voting.”
EC Greater Accra Regional Director explained that the tactile jacket is designed to easily identify the top with a notch. Users are also guided with the perforated edge of the ballot to also identify the top.
Users independently place the ballot in the tactile binder and, with the help of the numerically arranged raised dots, select their preferred candidates and vote accordingly in the provided window.
Two tactile jackets have been produced per voting table; one for the presidential elections and the other for the parliamentary elections.
— GNA
