The Electoral Commission (EC) will reopen the voters register for the supplementary registration of eligible voters from Thursday, July 31, to Sunday, August 10, this year, Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, the Chairman of the commission, has disclosed.

The supplementary registration is to allow those who have turned 18 and have not registered, as well as anybody who is over 18 but has never registered before, to register.

Dr Afari-Gyan announced this when he and his deputy, Mr Sarfo Kantanka, visited the offices of the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL) in Accra yesterday.

Earlier, the two officials had met the Managing Director of the group, Mr Ibrahim Awal, in his office, where they held fruitful discussions on how the group could corporate with the EC during the forthcoming elections.

The subsequent encounter with the members of the Editorial Conference of the Daily Graphic is part of the company's policy of engaging key stakeholders within governance institutions to share their thoughts on critical issues confronting the country.

In frank discussions, the EC chairman said the register was in pretty good shape and that "if we ensure that the reopening of the register is done transparently, we will have good elections".

He said the registration exercise would take place in about 5,000 electoral centers and it was estimated that at most about a million people would register.

"This is supplementary registration to update the register and not a fresh exercise to call for the reopening of all centers," he told the Editorial Conference.

He said the commission would exhibit the register by the middle of September and by the end of that month receive nominations for both the presidential and parliamentary elections.

Dr Afari-Gyan explained that the reopening of the voters register, originally scheduled for May this year, was delayed due to "a lot of unforeseen circumstances as a result of changes in methodology of the electoral process".

He explained that though the commission had put in place adequate measures to run the electoral calendar uninterrupted, the procurement process had been more difficult than anticipated.

He gave the assurance that the EC had acquired enough working materials but added that "we need to do a lot of training to get our workstations in place".

He said it was erroneous for a section of the populace to argue that the electoral calendar, the registration exercise and the filing of nominations were running late.

"We are late according to our own plan because there is no law which obligates the commission to do nominations at a specific time," Dr Afari-Gyan stated.

He said although the commission was not obligated to give the voters register to any political party, it would, in its own way of engaging the parties, send them electronic copies of the register.

"What the law requires us to do is to publicly exhibit the register," Dr Afari-Gyan stated.

He gave the assurance that the commission would ensure a thorough cleaning process to come up with a clean register for the elections.

On whether prisoners would be allowed to register, Dr Afari-Gyan explained that "the law does not allow us to register them by virtue of the fact that they are inmates".

According to him, the law states, "If you are incarcerated, you are deemed not to be resident at your place of incarceration" and explained that the issue of residence was a prerequisite for registration.

He said apart from right issues, there were difficulties associated with the exercise of registering prisoners.  Continued    Source: Daily Graphic - Daily Graphic