Desist from checking voting status online alone – NCCE

The National Commission for Civic Education is cautioning the general public against checking their eligibility to vote in the 2016 elections online.

Following a Supreme Court’s directive, the Electoral Commission last week deleted some 56,000 names, that used the NHIS card as a form of national identity to register, from the electoral roll.

There is however an ongoing exercise to give eligible voters who were affected another chance to properly register.

Since the EC announced to the public to check if they were affected at various designated points including its district offices, some people adopted innovative ways of making that exercise easier for the electorate.

Some local developers, for instance, came up with an online portal that supposedly allows one to check his/her status on the Electoral Commission’s voter register online: whether his /her name has been deleted from the register.

But speaking about the credibility of the system in checking ones presence on the voters’ register, the Director of Communications at the NCCE, Madam Joyce Afutu said the website in question has not been authenticated by the Electoral Commission hence eligible voters must tread cautiously.

She also admonished prospective voters to be watchful and guard against any possible action that can undermine their chances of voting. Madam Joyce Afutu noted, “The site itself has issued a kind of disclaimer that ‘Machecki is not commissioned by the Electoral Commission or affiliated to the Commission’”.