EC ends voters registration with over 16 million Ghanaians registered

The biometric data of 16,663,669 Ghanaians has been captured by the Electoral Commission (EC) in the just ended compilation exercise of a new voters register.

These were the figures provided by the commission as those recorded as at August 6, 2020, ahead of the December 7 polls.

According to the Deputy Chairman of Corporate Services at the EC, Dr Bossman Asare, the nationwide provisional figures since its last briefing have seen the top four regions maintain their positions.

Speaking at the eighth edition of the ‘Let the Citizen Know’ series on Friday, August 7, Dr Asare said; “As at 6th August, 2020 the Commission had registered a total of 16,663,669 nationwide. Since the last briefing, the four top regions have maintained their positions. The Greater Accra region has especially lost some grounds in percentage terms from 21.34 % to 20.8% of the total registered. The Ashanti region also reduced marginally by 0.1% to its current 17.9%.”

He added, the Commission has in the last week of the registration exercise witnessed one of the least numbers of registrants in all the regions of the country.

“This is not surprising because a number of the people had been captured by our officials before the final phase of the registration began. Also, for the first time in the exercise, the Ashanti region has registered slightly more in this phase than the routine leader, the Greater Accra region,” he explained.

The Deputy Chair added that in the course of the registration exercise, the Commission identified some applicants who had lost most or some of their finger imprints thus making it extremely difficult for their fingerprints to be captured for verification purposes.

Adding, the reasons for this are several but are largely rooted in the kinds of occupations of some applicants.

“For these applicants, their faces will be verified during the election to establish their identities. This is the facial recognition that the Commission has been talking about,” Dr Asare clarified.

The compilation of a new voters register by the Electoral Commission (EC) commenced on June 30, 2020 and ended on August 6, 2020 across all the districts in the country.

Although the EC projected registering 15 million eligible voters, the latest provisional figures show the electoral body has surpassed its projections.

Meanwhile, the EC says it is giving another opportunity to those who, in one way or the other could not avail themselves to register during the nationwide exercise. Such persons have the opportunity to do so this weekend in a mop-up exercise on Saturday and Sunday 8 and 9 August 2020 at its district offices across the country.

Additionally, the Commission has inaugurated a voter registration adjudication committee to help expunge the names of multiple registrants from the voter register.

The 16-member multi-stakeholder committee, which was inaugurated by the Chairperson of the EC, Mrs Jean Mensa, in Accra Wednesday, 5 August 2020, will be required to manually determine the eligibility of persons who have been flagged for multiple registration through the de-duplication process to be on the voter roll.

source: Ghana Web