EC ‘satisfied’ with pilot voter registration of 1,990 applicants

The Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC) has expressed satisfaction with the recently held piloting of the voter registration exercise, stressing that the lessons learnt will lead to an improved conduct of the upcoming mass registration.

It said 1,990 applicants were successfully registered nationwide over the two-day period, averaging 83 per day at each polling station.

This, the EC notes, puts it in a position to register over 13 million Ghanaians within the first 21 days of the mass registration scheduled to start late June.

All these were contained in a statement signed by the Acting Director of Public Affairs of the Commission, Sylvia Annoh.

The pilot voter registration, aimed at evaluating the preparedness of the election-management body for the mass registration, was held in all 16 regions on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In the Western Region, the Commission had to suspend the exercise on the second day after the biometric verification machines failed.

The Commission explained in the statement dated June 4, 2020 that the situation in the Western Region has afforded it the opportunity to test its in-built processes of dealing with equipment breakdowns during the process.

“The lessons learnt from this investigation will further improve the Commission’s response to such occurrences. It is worthy of note that on the first day of the pilot, the Western Region had the highest number of registered applicants (73),” it said.

According to the Commission, Day 1 saw 745 applicants being registered while the second day had 1,245 applicants registered.

The Ahafo Region had the highest registrants – of 189 – over the two-day period followed by the Ashanti Region (166) with the Western Region recording the lowest registrants of 73, obviously owing to the suspension of the exercise on Day 2.

“The Commission is satisfied with the exercise and will use the lessons learnt to improve upon the conduct of the upcoming Voter Registration Exercise.

“The Commission is appreciative of the interest shown by the general public and political parties to make this pilot worthwhile.”