EC: Voter Register list ready for Political Parties
Audrey Micah

Accra, November 18, Ghanadot - The Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC), Dr. Kwodwo Afari-Gyan has disclosed that the EC has completed the compilation of the digital copies of the register voter list, now ready to be dispatched to all the political parties in the country.

He assured Ghanaians of the EC’s commitment to ensure that this year’s general election is peaceful, devoid of violence and chaos. He also advised leaders of political parties to appoint intelligent, informed and knowledgeable polling agents at all polling centers to ensure free and fare elections.

According to him, the possibility of any political party rigging the elections is very slim because the EC's stringent mechanisms in place to fish out any perpetrator, but was quick to note that there are factors to rigging which do not necessarily take place on Election Day but can go to affect the outcome of elections.

“Rigging election does not take place on Election Day, you can rig elections by the way you draw constituencies to favour a party’s candidate, but fortunately in Ghana, you just cant draw constituencies like that, one has to use the combination of population and land size.

“Another stage by which an election could be rigged is during voter registration, if you manage to register for example children who are likely to cast their votes and therefore are registered, then you are also rigging election. If you move people across borders because if they vote, they would vote for you, you are rigging election. Therefore registration is a fertile ground for rigging election”.

Dr. Afari-Gyan said minors who were registered have already affected the voter register, especially in the countryside. He said the surest way for the EC to have got control of the situation was to have demanded for their birth certificates but unfortunately for them, a lot of Ghanaians do not have birth certificates.

He was worried about the low turnout of votes at the voter exhibition centers to check their names. According to him, Greater Accra only had 23 percent of people checking their names.

“One would wonder why people in the Greater Accra region would not go to check their names because the accessibility of the register would not have been a problem, but I suspect that there are a lot of multiple registration in Accra ”.

The chairman of the EC reiterated that for Ghana to have a peaceful and violent free election, it is the responsibility of all the political parties, the media and the security agencies that are expected to arrest offenders during the exercise to be up to their task to ensure that they are on top of issues.

He revealed that the EC has been able to carry out about 349 thousand deletion in the voter register as a result of the exhibition held with most of them been minors, foreigners, dead people and double registrations.

Ghanadot