The Electoral Commission (EC) yesterday announced a new timetable in the run-up to this year’s general election.
As it is not certain whether the elections would be held on November 7 or December 7, the commission is making plans to feed into either of the dates.
Claiming to have deleted the names of some 56,772 persons who supposedly registered as potential voters with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) card, the EC said with effect from this Friday, July 15, it would publish the names of the affected persons.
The publications are expected to be made in the national dailies to enable those affected to re-register to acquire new voter cards.
Director of Electoral Services at the commission, Samuel Tettey, who made this known at a press conference in Accra yesterday, said the list would also be posted in all the metropolitan, municipal and district offices of the EC in the affected areas.
After that, Mr Tettey said, “There will be data processing and preparation of the provisional register to persons who have re-registered.”
That is scheduled to take place between July 29 and August 2, 2016.
The provisional voter register would then be exhibited between August 5 and 7, 2016.
He revealed that the current provisional register for exhibition, commencing July 18, 2016 and ending July 28, 2016, had already been printed and sent to the various regions.
“What we are doing is, we have instructed all district officers to use red pens to cancel the names of all NHIS card applicants on the provisional voter register,” he said.
The EC also claimed to be in the process of printing the provisional list with the pictures which would be sent to the districts.
Copies of the register would later be given to the various political parties for their perusal.
The ECs Director of Electoral Services also indicated the commission’s commitment to correct the wrong dates on some voter ID cards as captured during the registration exercise.
“What we have done is that we have actually listed all those persons involved and the data will be corrected at the IT department over here and the cards of those persons affected will be printed and then sent to the exhibition centres for those applicants to collect them when they get to the exhibition centres,” he told the media.
But, according to him, if they failed to collect the cards during the exhibition period, the EC would then send them (cards) to the district offices for collection.
Following the Supreme Court order on 5th July 2016, the EC claims to have deleted the list of 56,772 persons on the electoral roll.
Mr Tettey assured, “Such persons would be given the opportunity to re-register at the district offices of the Electoral Commission in areas where they registered.”
Furthermore, he indicated that “Any other NHIS registrants who are found apart from the list which was presented to the Supreme Court, will also be deleted.”
The EC has therefore charged Ghanaians who know any individual or group of persons who used the NHIS card in acquiring a voter identification card to volunteer information for the name to be deleted from the register.
By Charles Takyi-Boadu