EC Adjudication Review Committee approves deduplication
The Electoral Commission (EC) has explained that the deduplication of 69236 names from the Voters Register was based on reports of the legally mandated Adjudication Review Committee (ARC).
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The ARC is reviewing cases of multiple registration after the 2014 limited registration exercise.
The EC noted that ARC, which followed due process for adjudication, recommended that either multiple names were moved from the Exceptions List and added to the register or deleted entirely.
“The EC wishes to state that it has no plan to remove names of suspected cases of multiple entries from only one region,” the Acting Public Affairs Director of the Commission,
Mr Christian Owusu-Parry, said in a statement in Accra and copied to the Ghana News Agency.
Representatives
The ARC is made up of representatives of political parties and civil society organisations, directors of the EC and selected senior staff members of the head office, who have the legal mandate to determine all cases of suspected multiple entries.
The EC noted that the process of removing multiple names from the register after the 2014 limited registration involved political parties.
It said it would continue to use the established process of deduplication to remove multiple names towards ensuring a cleaner register ahead of Election 2016.
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The statement explained that the adjudication process involved matching of fingerprints by Automatic Fingerprint Identification System, a software which detects and brings out multiple registrations.
Personal data
Other processes include examination of facial and personal data of all applicants with multiple registrations by officers of the commission, confirmation or rejection of each case and the decision thereon by adjudication supervisors of the commission, and printing out adjudication reports.
“We wish to assure the nation that wherever multiple registrations are detected, due process as outlined and agreed with stakeholders will be applied,” the statement said.
Statistics
Statistics indicate that after the 2014 limited registration, Western Region registered 91,869 and 7,084 were suspected to have engaged in multiple registrations; the Central Region registered 92,647, with 5,968 suspected multiple registrations, and Greater Accra registering 162,809 with 11,555 suspected multiple registrations.
Volta Region registered 52,783, with 4,099 people suspected to have engaged in multiple registrations; Eastern registered 93,149, with 5,490 suspected to have engaged in multiple registration; and Ashanti registered 200,559, with 14,651 suspected to have engaged in multiple registration.
The rest
Brong Ahafo registered 89,649, with 6,964 suspected to have engaged in multiple registrations; Northern registered 83,732, with 8,169 suspected to have engaged in multiple registrations; Upper East registered 35,849, with 2,977 suspected to have engaged in multiple registrations; and Upper West registered 24,018, with 2,279 suspected to have engaged in multiple registrations.
Background
It would be recalled that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) had reiterated its conviction that only a new credible voters register would guarantee free, fair and transparent elections when the party held a press conference last week.
The NPP, therefore, called for an immediate stop to all processes involved in the internal cleaning of the register until all parties could satisfy themselves of the modalities and means by which the internal cleaning was being done.
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