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One day voter registration tomorrow
The Electoral Commission (EC) has said that it will reopen the voter registry for one day, tomorrow, as proposed.
The exercise, which will take place at all EC district offices in all regions from 7 am to 6 pm, aims to provide an opportunity to those who qualify but who, for one reason or another, were unable to register during the registration made recently.
This complies with the electoral guidelines in Ghana that stipulate that a person can vote, provided their name is on the certified register at least 60 days before the elections.
The process is expected to be completed to meet the guidelines that will allow the new pool of applicants to vote in the December 2020 elections.
Collective resolution
Meanwhile, the EC has called on stakeholders in the electoral process to put the country’s interest above all others by supporting the commission’s ongoing interventions towards transparent, free, fair and credible general elections.
While reassuring the public that the EC had competent human resources capable of fulfilling its constitutional mandate, its president, Ms Jean Mensa, said the commission needed cooperation and constructive criticism from other stakeholders, especially political parties, to be successful.
“As a commission, we must state unequivocally that the EC recognizes the sacrosanct mandate it has been given to facilitate the choice of the leadership of our country. It is not a responsibility that we take lightly or casually,” he said.
Speaking at the Let the Citizen Know series at the EC headquarters in Accra last Monday, Ms Mensa asked all stakeholders to focus on “what we must collectively do to keep our country on the right foot before , during and after the elections “.
“I assure you that we are focused and committed to holding free, fair, credible, peaceful and transparent elections on December 7, 2020,” he emphasized.
He described the processes for obtaining a credible record of elections as critical to the sustainability of Ghana’s democracy.
Therefore, he underscored the need for a collective determination of all actors in the electoral space to commit to peace by addressing the challenges of the system.
Kitchen figures
Ms. Mensa used the event to provide updates on issues that arose from the recently completed voter registration display exercise and the steps the EC had taken to correct the anomalies.
Some political actors had alleged during the presentation that the EC had devised a plan to fill in figures in some parts of the country.
For example, it was alleged that the record had mysteriously increased at Asawase in the Ashanti region with an additional 907 names.
Responding to that claim, the EC chair said that the registration process was complete, transparent and airtight, so there was no way someone could deliberately add names and go unnoticed.
He insisted that all the names found in the registry were those of “real human beings who have their unique biometric details captured and are therefore verifiable.”
“The registration system established was such that registration would only be made within a particular date and time, from June 30 to August 6, 2020, and between 7 am and 5 pm on each of these days” , He said.
Deduplication
Ms Mensa also described as false an allegation that the EC had abandoned the deduplication process aimed at detecting multiple registrants.
“The process of deduplication and biometric identification had been the foundation of the EC’s information technology (IT) system. Without deduplication, the registry will not contain only unique persons; without deduplication, it would not have been possible for amendments to be done, as an applicant must be confirmed for the amendments to be made using their biometric data – their fingerprints and facial features, “he said.
He added that the adjudication process, which was a joint effort between the commission, political parties, and civil society organizations (CSOs), was made possible by the deduplication process.
“So it is absurd for anyone to suggest that the deduplication process was abandoned, especially when the deduplication system has the ability to deduplicate 20 million records in two weeks,” he explained.
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