Jean Mensa
The Electoral Commission (EC) has announced that it will start the limited voter registration exercise today, Tuesday, May 7, and end on Monday, May 27, 2024 in all 268 districts of the commission.
EC chair, Jean Mensa, who announced this at a media briefing yesterday in Accra, said the 21-day exercise will be conducted in 785 electoral areas and 25 public universities in the country.
She said apart from the centres that have been gazetted with a movement plan, all political parties have been informed of activities of the EC in line with its regulations to enable them plan and prepare their agents to observe the registration process nationwide.
According to her, the EC has made projections to register 623,000 new registrants for the exercise, to augment the 910,000 new registrants who were registered in 2023, which far exceeded the 723,000 target.
Madam Mensa disclosed that the 25 public universities were chosen due to the high number of students residing on campus.
She said registration kits for the exercise have the capacity to print statistics of the day and end of day report.
She stated that the political parties, if interested, would be able to know the number of persons who have registered in all the centres in any given day.
Madam Mensa further indicated that the EC has made additional back-ups at its district offices to use standby generators in the event where there are power outages during the exercise.
She disclosed that, officers have also been asked to go offline and register new registrants and later capture them in their database when power is restored in the various districts.
She said the EC has over the months invested considerable amount of time in procuring its materials and logistics for the registration exercise and the election as a whole, stressing that it has adopted appropriate competitive bidding as the method of procurement, which has helped it to obtain value for money for its logistics and materials.
Madam Mensa also refuted allegations that the EC recruited individuals who were provided by the Municipal and District Chief Executives from the regions.
“I am happy to say that we have successfully recruited returning officers and deputy returning officers for each of the 268 district offices nationwide, with a mechanism to identify each of them by their names, voter ID cards, Ghana cards as well as residential addresses,” she stated.
The EC chair maintained that Ghanaians who are 18 years and above with sound mind were eligible.
She added that persons who are found to have flouted the rules would be liable for prosecution, while warning minors to desist from attempting to register at any of the centres.
She disclosed that 3,277 officials made up of permanent and temporary staff will undertake various roles in the voter registration exercise.
“The registration will include Saturdays and Sundays. All district offices will have fixed teams ranging from two to three teams depending on the size of the districts and the expectation of the number of registered voters to come through,” she pointed out.
According to the EC chair, mobile teams have also been deployed to some catchment areas from one electoral area to the other to register qualified applicants.
She mentioned that all the names of returning officers and their deputies with their photographs will be made available to all the political parties.
By Ebenezer K. Amponsah