Despite widespread reports of low patronage of the nationwide voter exhibition exercise, the Electoral Commission (EC) has described the 21-day exercise in all 29,000 centres across the country as impressive.
The exhibition of the register of voters, which began on 18 July, was to give the Ghanaian electorate the opportunity to verify their status on the roll and also help delete names of dead persons ahead of the elections in December.
Class News’ checks, since the inception of the exercise, revealed that there was little interest in the exercise but the Deputy Head of Communications for the Electoral Commission, Ayuba Alhassan Yusif, in an interview with Class News, said the EC was generally satisfied with the exercise, which ended on Sunday August 7.
“We have been monitoring the process; we’ve been generally impressed with the way the exercise has gone so far. It’s generally been very smooth, no report of incidences at the various exhibition centres, people have generally been calm, gone to the centres to check their names, so we’ve been generally satisfied with the way the process has gone so far,” he stated.
Meanwhile, Mr Yusif noted that voters whose names appear on the multiple registration list, can object to it if they feel they did not do so deliberately.
“When your name appears on the multiple registration list and you go to the centre, you can still object to your name [being] on the multiple registration list if you think that you did not deliberately register more than once. The objection will be sent to the district registration review officer, we will invite you, and also we will invite the person who objected to your name if that is the case. But if you did the objection yourself, we will invite you to appear before the district registration review [officer], who is normally a magistrate, and then he or she will look into your case. At the end of the hearing, if the magistrate or the registration review officer thinks that you didn’t do it deliberately, then he or she will recommend that we restore your name on the register, but at the end of the hearing, if it is established that you did it deliberately, then the recommendation will be that we should remove your name from the register…,” he explained.
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