Voter apathy to register exhibition results in very low turnout
The voters’ register may be far from clean as a 10-day exhibition exercise meant to clean it up ends today.
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The register still contains names of the dead and people who engaged in multiple registration, the Daily Graphic learnt at some exhibition centres visited Wednesday at Adabraka and Asylum Down, both in the Klottey Korle Constituency in Accra.
Under the circumstances, the names of many dead people may not be expunged from the register.
A few anomalies such as errors in the gender identity of some voters were detected during the exhibition exercise which recorded low patronage, generally writes Kofi Yeboah.
The dead
Exhibition officers told the Daily Graphic that although many people had come to inform them about their dead relatives whose names were in the register, they could not produce death certificates to substantiate their claims as required by the electoral rules.
“When you ask them to go and bring a death certificate to confirm the death of the person, they go and don’t come back again,” the Exhibition Officer at Volta Lines Exhibition Centre, Mr Prince Aboagye, said.
The Exhibition Officer at the SNAPS Nursery Exhibition Centre, Ms Enyonam Senyo, said many people had reported about their dead relatives but they did not carry along death certificates as evidence of the claim.
At the Adabraka Presbyterian Church Exhibition Centre, the Exhibition Officer, Mr Isaac Paintsil, said three people had reported about their dead relatives. But only one of them produced a death certificate to support the assertion.
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He said in line with laid down procedure, that person had to fill an objection form, citing the death certificate number, and authenticate it with a thumbprint.
Multiple registration
The incidence of multiple registration involves people who have registered at more than one centre.
At the Super Service Exhibition Centre at Asylum Down, 11 people were on the multiple registration list.
The Exhibition Officer, Ms Loretta Ofori, said three of them had gone to check their data in the register and she issued them with a receipt to go to the office of the Electoral Commission (EC).
At the EC office, she explained, the people involved in multiple registration would appear before a panel to explain their actions.
The NCR Exhibition Centre at Adabraka also has a list of five people who engaged in multiple registration.
But the Exhibition Officer, Mr Collins Kwaku, said none of them had gone to check their data in the register.
Low patronage
The exhibition officers also indicated that patronage had been very low during the 10-day exercise.
At the Volta Lines Exhibition Centre at Adabraka, only 108 out of 1,370 voters in the register had checked their data as at the close of exhibition on Tuesday.
The situation was not different at the SNAPS Nursery Exhibition Centre at Asylum Down
Out of 980 voters in the register, only 70 had checked their data at the time the Daily Graphic visited the centre.
At the Super Service Exhibition Centre at Asylum Down, the Exhibition Officer, Ms Ofori, said patronage had improved gradually since the beginning of the exercise last Friday.
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Out of 1166 voters in the register, 343 had checked their data at the time the Daily Graphic’s visit.
At the Adabraka Presbyterian Church Exhibition Centre, the situation was quite encouraging as compared to the other centres visited. Out of 1330 voters in the register, 387 had checked their data at the time of the visit.
The Exhibition Officer at the NCR Exhibition Centre at Adabraka, Mr Kwaku, said patronage had been below expectation, with 90 out of 648 voters in the register checking their data.
From Wa Michael Quaye reports that the voter register exhibition attracted low patronage in the Upper West Region.
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At the Central Prisons Centre, just four persons had checked their names and details in the register as of 12 noon last Wednesday. The four names bring to only 12 people who had checked the details in the register at the polling centre since the exercise began last Friday.
Shirley Asiedu-Addo reports from Cape Coast that generally, less than half of the expected prospective voters on the register at the various polling stations in Cape Coast had checked on their names as of noon yesterday.
Exhibition officers had expected that the exercise would build up on the last day, but a good number of voters told the Daily Graphic they were not going to check on their names, indicating that they were certain their names would be in the register.
From Sunyani Zadok Kwame Gyesi writes that the nationwide voter exhibition exercise was still crawling at a snail pace in the Sunyani Municipality in the Brong Ahafo Region, adding that a visit to some centres by the Daily Graphic revealed very low turnout.
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The officer in charge at Area One, Mrs Lydia Adjabeng, suspected there was a deliberate attempt by voters not to check their names because they were convinced that their names were in the register.
Tim Dzamboe reports from Ho that the exhibition exercise in some parts of the Volta Region was not encouraging because far less than a quarter of the expected voters, had cross checked their names yesterday.
From Takoradi, Akwasi Ampratwum-Mensah, reports that the general turn-out of registered voters to verify their names in the ongoing exhibition was discouraging.
During a visit by the Daily Graphic to a number of the centres in Takoradi, it was realised that the number of those who checked their names kept dwindling by the day.
At the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation point, Ms Marian Kyei-Benson indicated that, at the start of the process, 50 visited the centre to cross check their names, 35 turned up on Saturday, 16 on Sunday, 17 the next day, nine on Tuesday and at about 11:40 am, yesterday, only seven voters had verified if their names were in the register.
Samuel Duodu reports from Tamale that the exercise had started picking up in Tamale, the Northern Regional capital with a day to the close of the exercise.
As at 1.30 p.m, when the Daily Graphic visited the Queen Elizabeth Nursery A and B exhibition centres, Messers Tindanzo Abanikpama and Zakaria Dawud, exhibition officers for the two centres respectively, said with a day to the end of the exercise, people were trooping in to check their names in the register.
At the Queen Elizabeth "A" exhibition centre, Mr. Abanikpama told this reporter that 525 people out of a total of 1,090 registered voters on the roll had checked their names with nine persons reported dead while the "B" centre recorded 140 out of a total of 256 voters with two deceased persons.