The Electoral Commission is urging registered voters whose names are missing from the 2020 electoral roll to use the ongoing voter register exhibition exercise as an opportunity to rectify the anomaly.
The Commission, in a Saturday, September 19, 2020, statement said the phenomenon of names of registered voters not appearing on the provisional register may be due to an incomplete data transfer, or other reasons.
“As with all voter registrations, a number of persons who register may find themselves on the Exception Lists and the Multiples List. In addition, a number of names may also be missing for reasons resulting from the incomplete transfer of data.”
Reports of omissions of names of registered voters from the provisional voters’ register continue to come in from different parts of the country.
Minority Leader, Haruna Idrissu has complained about the omission of names in the Tamale South Constituency.
Outgoing Tamale Central MP, Inusah Fuseini, alleged that the National Democratic Congress’ national monitoring revealed an omission of 1,200 names from the South Day constituency alone, while Ashaiman MP, Ernest Norgbey also alleged over 7,000 names were omitted from his constituency’s register.
Ernest Norgbey in particular alleged that the Electoral Commission was deliberately deleting the names of registered voters from perceived NDC strongholds.
But the Electoral Commission has denied the claims and insisted that voters who duly registered and were issued with Voter ID Cards but cannot find their names on the provisional register can rectify the situation.
“It is for this reason that the law incorporates and makes provision for the Exhibition Exercise and mechanisms such as the Inclusion process, which allows persons who registered but cannot trace their names on the Provisional Register, to file for Inclusion.”
The Electoral Commission, per its statement, thus encouraged all affected persons to take advantage of the ongoing exercise.
“The ongoing Exhibition Exercise that started on Friday the 18th of September and which will run up to Friday the 25th of September, 2020 is meant to solve and fix issues that may arise from the Registration Exercise.”
“The Electoral Commission [also] encourages all registered voters to continue participating in the Exhibition Exercise by visiting Exhibition Centers or through the Commission’s SMS Platform by simply texting their Voter ID Card Number to the Short Code 1422”.
Below is the press statement from the Electoral Commission;
