The Electoral Commission (EC) has reiterated that the final voters register for the December 7 polls it presented to the various political parties and independent presidential candidates last Wednesday remains the true certified copy of the register.
It has therefore dismissed an assertion by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) that “the fact that there’s no summary or detailed statistics of the voters register makes it not certified.”
The Deputy Director of Elections and Information Technology (IT) of the NDC, Dr Rashid Tanko Computer, last Wednesday night returned the party’s soft copy of the register to the commission, saying the NDC would not take it back until it received the summaries or detailed statistics of the register.
Dr Computer who spoke to journalists present at the meeting to hand over soft copies of the final certified voters register for the 2024 general election to the various political parties and the independent presidential candidates said without the summaries the register was incomplete and not certified.
This was hours after they had been provided with copies of the certified voters register at the meeting with the parties.
EC
The Chairperson of the EC, Jean Mensa, in response to the demand of the NDC for the detailed statistics of the register, said: “There is nowhere in any law that requires that you get a summary and it is important that we put that on record.”
“So the fact that there is no summary does not make the final voters register not certified. The register as you see, as you have it, is a certified copy of the register. If you choose to return it, that’s your merit,” she said.
The EC Chairperson explained further that since 1992, the commission has never given a summary to anybody.
“In 2019, we gave out a soft copy of the register. In 2020, we gave out a soft copy of the register. In 2023, we gave out a soft copy of the register, and it did not have a summary.”
“So if it is your request today, that’s fine. I mean, we are not obliged to give it to you. But I think that’s a commission that believes in transparency, that accommodates and is responsive to the needs of its stakeholders,” she said.
The EC Chairperson therefore gave an assurance that the EC would provide the summaries of the certified voters register to the political parties.
“As a commission in the interest of transparency and responsiveness, we will provide you with the summary,” she said.
“We place on record here that the registers that you have in those cases are the certified copies of the final register. They are fit, they are credible, they are robust for delivering a true, a credible, a fair and a transparent election in December 2024.”
“This has been the practice since 1992, and it is out of the spirit of transparency and responsiveness, as I mentioned, that we are providing those summaries to you now. So as we indicated, we will notify you tomorrow, and we will send the summaries to you,” she assured further.
Source: Richard Nana Appiah Kubi/Ahotoronline.com
