The Minority Leader in Parliament, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, has officially notified Parliament that all Members of Parliament on the ticket of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) would not accept the national voters register compiled by the Electoral Commission of Ghana for the December 7, 2024 general elections as credible and fit-for-purpose until a forensic audit is conducted into its database.
He said even the Electoral Commission itself has admitted that the all-important voters register is ridden with errors and irregularities and adds that it is possible someone may have tempered with the database and therefore a forensic audit is of importance.
Speaking in Parliament on Tuesday September 3, the Minority Leader noted: “The Electoral Commission has admitted that the voters register is riddled with irregularities and flaws. I dare say Mr. Speaker, the scale of these irregularities is such that someone may have tempered with the vote register date base.
“Mr. Speaker, I’m sorry to say that we cannot vouch for the integrity of the voter register as it stands at the moment. The details of these irregularities are so fertile and cannot be accepted. We, therefore, demand a forensic audit into the voter register database,” Dr. Ato Forson added.
Member of Parliament for Tamale South, Haruna Iddrisu, immediate past Minority Leader, added his voice in support of the position taken by the current Minority Leader and said the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Jean Adukwei Mensa should be summoned to appear before the House to explain the several instances of irregularities and flaws contained in the voters register.
Haruna Iddrisu noted: “there is a happening in my Tamale South Constituency of uneasy transfer of voters from Tamale South to Pusiga, I pray it is not on a wide scale or large scale that would affect other consistories. But maybe the Committee in charge of the Electoral Commission or your good self may want to invite the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission
“The Electoral Commission has 75,000 biometric devices which will be used for the purposes of conducting the presidential and parliamentary elections on December 7 . These biometric devices would have to be subjected to some technical audit to know one; the state of the batteries, two; the state of the adaptors, and three; the state of their readiness for elections on 7th December and we would require the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission to come and notify this House on how ready the biometric devices are”
The Tamale South MP noted further: “My information is that they would need to recheck all the batteries because we do not want a situation where on election day 7th December, we are told that we should transit to manual system. We want the system to work. The functionality, the efficacy of its batteries are important . You cannot have devices of 75,000 and when you are acquiring spare batteries, you are talking about 5,000. It should be 20,000 to 25,000 or even a half of it.
“So Mr. Speaker, the Committee responsible to the Electoral Commission would have to engage her so we know what the financial gaps of the Commission are because we may not have the opportunity again.
“Transfer of votes, absenteeism, even special voting, we need to know how many security agencies have registered to vote where and when so that no security person take part on the special voting and on election day, some of them may want to vote at the designated areas. This House demands the Electoral Commission comes with a full list of people who have applied to be treated as special delegates and that shared with us.”
Meanwhile the Electoral Commission has admitted there were some mistakes in the provisional voters register of some constituencies but the anomaly has been corrected. .
Deputy Commissioner of the EC in charge of Corporate Affairs, Dr Eric Bossman Asare, gave the assurance of the corrected anomalies: “In the preparations towards the 2024 Exhibition Exercise, the Absent Voters List and the Transferred Voters List inadvertently included all transfers that had been done since 2020 when this Register was first prepared. This has resulted in a higher-than-expected number of Absent and Transferred Voters.”
“This understandably may have caused some anxiety to our stakeholders, as exemplified by the press conference addressed by the NDC in the Ajumako-Enyan-Essiam Constituency of the Central Region.”
“We wish to restate that the Provisional Voters Register is not the Final Voters Register. The central objective of the Exhibition Exercise is to correct any anomalies and issues with the Provisional Register before the Final Register is produced. This has been the practice since 1992.
“The Commission wishes to assure the Public that, after the Exhibition Exercise, the Final Voters Register that will be produced will be robust and credible,” Dr Asare assured.
“The Commission has corrected this anomaly and will share with all the Political Parties the corrected Absent and Transferred Voters List for each Polling Station that contains only those applicants who successfully applied for transfers or special voting for the 2024 General Elections,” Dr. Asare noted on Monday September 2 during a press conference.
