EC restores the names of 51 people in the registry after a court ruling

General news for Saturday, November 7, 2020

Source: 3 News

2020-11-07

Fifty-one people, who challenged the Election Commission’s decision to remove their names from the 2020 voter registry in court due to various alleged irregularities, have had their names back from the registry.
Commission President Jean Mensa told Parliament on Saturday November 7 that the 51 were part of a list of multiples and exceptions with more than 32,000 applicants.
Ms. Jean Mensa clarified that the 32,621 do not represent unique individuals who have found their names in the registry, but rather the number of times a multiple registry or violation occurred.
The president of the EC was in Parliament at the request of the members to receive information on the preparations of the electoral management body with exactly one month to go to the polls.
The Commission had been invited to appear before the Chamber on Thursday, November 5, but did not appear.
A statement issued later explained that most of the commissioners had traveled outside of Accra and this was duly communicated to the leadership of Parliament, with whose agreement a new date was scheduled.
When appearing before the Chamber, Ms. Mensa gave the total cost of the new voting system acquired for the conduct of its operations, indicating that so far only a partial payment has been made to providers.
“I am pleased to report that all the infrastructure deployed mainly biometric registration kits, verification kits, software and data centers are working efficiently.”
Specifically in the electoral roll, he said that a total of 17,029,971 unique people were registered after the process, which began on Tuesday, June 30.
However, 32,621 were included in a list of multiples (18,619) and exceptions (14,002) for a variety of illegal practices, including the registration of minors.
“I am glad to note that a good number of them went beyond the decisions of the DRRO, who is a magistrate and went to court to seek redress and we noted these with pleasure … by putting 51 people who challenged their objections [on]to the registry. That decision has been reversed and their names have been included in the registry.