Biometric Registration: Ashanti, Volta lead in underage registration

The Electoral Commission (EC) has made a disturbing revelation that the 2012 biometric register has a high number of underage potential voters.

The troubling news was disclosed by the Chairman of the Electoral Commission, Dr. Kwadwo Afari Gyan on Thursday at a press conference in Accra.

Dr. Afari Gyan said even though it has not been confirmed, he was informed at a meeting that the Ashanti and Volta Regions, considered as the strongholds of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) respectively, had the highest number of minors in the register.

The EC Chairman expressed disquiet about the situation and slammed the deceptive tendencies displayed by people in the registration exercise despite all the public education on the process.

In a related development, the EC has added three thousand more polling centres to the existing 23,015 centres for the December polls bring the number of centres to 26,015.

Dr. Afari Gyan explained that the decision to increase it was because some of the polling centres had too many subscriptions which could slow down the process on voting day.

The 3,000 new centres are spread across the ten regions in the country.