2016 Elections: Manual and Biometric verification to co-exist
The Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC) has announced that manual verification of registered voters would be introduced, alongside biometric verification during the 2016 general elections.
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The combination of the two processes is expected to better help to verify people whose particulars appear on the voters register but who may be rejected by the biometric verification devices.
There were several such incidents in the 2012 elections where biometric machines either broke down or failed to verify biometric details of voters.
A statement issued by the EC and signed by Mr. Christian Owusu-Parry, Acting Director of Public Affairs said the decision, among others, was agreed at an Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting Tuesday.
Other decisions taken at the IPAC meeting as part of outstanding issues from electoral reforms recommendations were that 29,000 polling stations would be used for the 2016 general elections instead of the 30,000 previously agreed at IPAC due to budget constraints of the EC.
IPAC also accepted a working definition for “over-voting” to be where the number of ballots in the ballot box exceed the number of verified voters.
“The Commission informed IPAC that the panel, led by Justice V.C.R.A.C Crabbe that was engaged by the Commission to collate views on the voters register and to make recommendations to the Commission on the way forward, presented its report on 21st December, 2015. The Commission will study the report and make a decision on the voters register as soon as practicable. It further assured the nation that it would make the report of the Crabbe panel as well as the Commission’s final position available to the public shortly.”
The statement said the EC’s calendar of activities for the 2016 general elections was also distributed and accepted at the meeting.
