The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has said the Electoral Commission’s (EC) just ended limited voter registration exercise was fraught with widespread irregularities and massive challenges that prevented most qualified voters from accessing registration facilities.
The NDC in a statement said the challenges associated with the exercise vindicates the party’s “earlier suspicions of collusion between some EC officials, and some elements in the ruling NPP party, to suppress the process in the NDC’s strongholds.”
The party listed widespread failures of registration machines and chaotic scenes at most of the centres as some of the many challenges encountered during the exercise.
“There were chaotic scenes and overcrowding at most of the centres. This caused many confrontations and intimidation. Some people posing as EC officials were seen registering people in their vehicles and other obscure corners.”
The NDC believes the exercise could have been “better managed considering the extent of deviation (+71%) from the ECs own target of 700,000.”
The party therefore called for an IPAC meeting with the “purpose of reviewing and auditing the entire process to make sure that the next limited registration exercise ahead of the 2020 elections does not suffer same or greater irregularities.”
1.2m new voters registered
The Electoral Commission had said a total of about 1.2 million new voters were registered under the limited voter registration exercise.
Out of that number, the registration of 8,500 new voters were challenged.
In an interview with Radio Ghana in Kumasi, the Director of Electoral Services, Dr Serebour Quaicoe said the commission had initially projected to register about 700,000 but ended up with 1.2 million.
The NDC had prior to the exercise rebuked the EC for attempting to limit the exercise to only the commission’s district office.
The commission subsequently expanded the centres to cover additional centres following pressure from the NDC.
