Voter exhibition exercise was successful – EC

The Electoral Commission (EC) has described the just ended exhibition of the voters register as successful.

According to the commission, 7,969,887 persons verified their details during the 10-day provisional voters exhibition exercise.

The number constitutes 46.9 per cent of the total number of voters in the provisional register.

Chairperson of the EC, Mrs Jean Mensa made this known at a press conference in Accra on Monday, September 28.

According to her, 698,404 voters verified their details using the commission’s short messaging system (SMS), while 7,271,498 voters verified their details physically at the various centres.

In total, 7,969,887 persons verified their details during the provisional voter exhibition exercise.

According to Mrs Mensa, the figure was impressive following the short period within which the exercise was conducted.

"The difference here is that with this particular exhibition, we had 46.9 per cent verifying their details over a 10-day period. And in 2016, we had 45.6 per cent verifying their details over a 21-day period," she said.

She noted also that centres in rural areas recorded more active participation right from the first day of exhibition, while voters within the urban areas preferred to utilise the SMS platform.

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No exercise is full proof

During the voter exhibition exercise, the opposition National Democratic Congress through its flag bearer, John Mahama accused the EC of taking "unacceptable steps" that had the potential of disturbing Ghana's democracy.

The party also questioned the credibility of the register, and accused the EC of omitting names of its supporters especially in its strongholds from the register.

Acknowledging the challenges faced during the exercise, Mrs Mensa said, those challenges were widespread and not concentrated in certain regions.

She said the purpose of the exercise was to allow for mistakes in the register to be corrected and that “The Commission has no intention whatsoever to disenfranchise any persons or group of persons.”

“The law envisages that even in the most meticulous process of voter registration, the process is not full proof and therefore it provided the clearly spelt out mechanism to correct all errors and omission in the register,” she said.

“It is important to note that the commission comprises competent men and women who fully understand and respect the great mandate handed to them by our constitution. However, in the execution of various duties, human and administrative errors do occur. We wish to state unequivocally that we have the ability and the competence to fix and resolve all outstanding issues with the register,” she added.

Duplicate ID numbers

On the issue of duplication, Mrs Mensa said 88,000 duplicate voter ID numbers were detected in the provisional register.

She explained that the duplicates occurred because the registration kits were offline hence all voter ID cards were issued independently.

She added that 88,000 duplicates were detected and that the Commission was in the process of issuing new ID cards.