Only 6.6m voters verified out of 15.7m on electoral register

• Posted on August 16, 2016
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

Despite the fact that exhibition of the voters’ register is very important in the electoral process, less than half of registered voters verified their names during the 21 days of voters’ exhibition exercise carried out by the Electoral Commission (EC).

Out of the 15.7 million (15, 744, 730) names on the voters’ register, 6.6 million (6,693,292) voters, representing 43%, verified their names in an exercise that started on July 18 and ended on August 7, 2016.

Head of Communication and Public Relations of EC, Mr Eric Kofi Dzakpasu told The Finder that data compiled by the EC indicates that at the end of the exhibition, 6.5 million (6,566,049) voters visited polling stations to check their names.

127,243 Voters checked their names using SMS

An additional 127,243 checked their names using Short Message Service (SMS) short code 6363, he said.

The exhibition of the voters’ register is very important in the electoral process because it offers all registered voters the opportunity to check their names and particulars and also ensure that names of the dead and minors, as well as double registrations are removed and corrected respectively.

The EC has consistently said cleaning the voters’ register is a collective responsibility and that every registered voter must be interested in checking their names in the register during the exhibition.

NHIS registrants – 29,550 re-registered

Mr Dzakpasu said according to final figures, 29,550 voters, representing 52% of National Health Insurance (NHI) card registrants who were deleted, re-registered at the end of the entire exercise.

He explained that during phase one, which spanned July 18 to 28, 2016, a total of 24,287 voters, representing 42.78% of 56,772 NHI cardholders, re-registered.

27,222 NHI card voters fail to re-register

This means 27,222 NHI card registrants whose names were deleted failed to re-register.

Following agitations, the EC embarked on a phase two re-registration of NHI cardholders.

Mr Dzakpasu said an additional 5,263 people were re-registered by the EC at the end of the second phase of the registration exercise for deleted NHI card voters last Friday.

The deletion of the names was as a result of a ruling by the Supreme Court directing the EC to delete the names of all persons who had used the NHI card to register as voters.

However, the court also directed the EC to give such persons the opportunity to register.

“The deletion of minors, foreigners and cases of multiple and illegal registration is still undergoing investigation and adjudication by the District Registration Officer, that is the District Magistrate, before we can get final figures,” Mr Dzakpasu added.

By Elvis DARKO, Accra