Provisional Voters’ Register Will Be Ready By June 2020 – EC

The provisional voters' register would be ready by the end of June 2020, the Electoral Commission (EC) has announced.

The EC had scheduled to begin the compilation of a new voters' register on April 18, 2020.

The exercise which is expected to be completed by May 30 will be followed with an exhibition exercise.

The exhibition exercise will be conducted from August 15-28, 2020.

Speaking on Eyewitness News on Friday, the Director of Elections for the Commission Dr. Serebour Quarcoo stated that although the exercise will end in May, the register would be completed by June after all double registrations are deleted and all other necessary checks are done.

“Our target is that a polling station should not go beyond 850 so even if we take 100 a day, the 10 days will give you 1000 but when we finish and there is a reason why a place was not able to cover everybody, we'll do mopping up. We'll finish in May but our projection is that by the end of June, the provisional register would be ready. We'll then do due duplication and adjudication because whether we like it or not some people will still do double registration and we will do the due duplication to delete those who have done double registration,” he said. Details of the exercise

The EC plans to deploy 8,000 registration devices for the exercise which will be rolled out at 32,000 polling centres nationwide.

It also intends to adopt a system where four polling stations will be merged to form a cluster to ease the process.

A period of 40 days will be used for the registration by spending 10 days at a cluster plus three resting days, making a total of 43 days for the complete exercise.

Opposing parties angry about date

The various political parties kicking against the compilation of the new voters' register blasted the Electoral Commission for announcing a specific date for the commencement of the exercise.

According to the group known as the Inter-party Resistance Against the New Voter's Register, the Commission acted in bad faith by announcing April 18, 2020 as the date to begin compiling a new register ahead of the 2020 general elections.

The group had suspended its mass actions which included demonstration exercises to await the outcome of an impending meeting between the various elections stakeholders and the EC's Eminent Advisory Committee.

But even before a date for the scheduled meeting could be announced, the EC on Thursday said the compilation of the new register will begin from April 18 to May 30, 2020.

The group therefore resumed its mass action.

Meanwhile, the Eminent Advisory Committee will meet IPAC on Thursday, January 30, 2020 to “engage with the Inter-Party Advisory Committee on the Electoral Commission's plan to compile a new Voters' Register ahead of the 2020 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections.”

---citinewsroom