The Electoral Commission (EC) has said it is not considering an extension of the period of the ongoing limited voter registration exercise.
Although there have been calls from various quarters, including election watchers and politicians, for an extension, the Commission believes it’s on course to meet its target of registering 623,000 first-time voters.
The Commission maintains that the exercise, despite the initial technical challenges, has been smooth, with a significant increase in the number of applicants registered.
Addressing a news conference in Accra on Tuesday, May 21, the Deputy Commissioner in Charge of Operations, Samuel Tetteh, said the decision for an extension is “not on the table” for consideration.
“We have 21 days within which to register applicants but in our briefings, we stated that in the first week, we had a lot of people in the queue…we stated clearly that if you go to some registration centres, you find out that it’s something like a walk-in and we are not recording high gatherings in some registration centres.
“…if you go to most of the registration centres, the situation used not to be like in the first week, so we don’t think that at this time it will be feasible for anyone to call for an extension,” he stated.
The exercise, which commenced on Tuesday, May 7, is expected to end on Monday, May 27, 2024.
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Moreover, the Commission dismissed the allegations of registering applicants secretly using the stolen BVRs. The Commission while denying the allegations, challenged the group, Election Watch Ghana, to provide evidence of locations to substantiate the claim.
“The Commission decision not to disclose what it considers security sensitive information cannot be misconstrued as providing a cover for the Commission to register voters from some undisclosed location.
Allegations of secret registration baseless, without merit – EC
“We challenge the Election Watch Ghana to provide information on locations where they believe this illegal registration is going on. The Commission urges the political who are key stakeholders in the electoral process to publish their collated daily registration figures from all gazetted registration centres and inform the public if the figures published by the Commission do not reflect the number of voters registered at the gazetted registration centres,” he stated.
Meanwhile, the Commission said it has registered 522,025 applicants after 13 days of the ongoing exercise.
