4,000 multiple registration detected at on-going Biometric Voter Registration – EC
The Electoral Commission (EC) on Wednesday said 4,000 multiple registrations had so far been detected nationwide, allaying fears that the problem occurred in a particular Region that could favour a particular political party.
Mr Gilbert Akomea, Director, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Department of EC, said such registrations did not follow any pattern, neither did they come from any particular part of the country or Region, but were widespread across the country.
However, he said, the current technology being used by the EC to compile the biometric data of eligible voters allowed for effective detection and removal of multiple registrations, therefore all such names would be cleaned to ensure a credible voter register for Election 2012.
Mr Akomea was addressing a dialogue session on the topic: “All we must know about the 2012 General Elections”, at the on-going Third Ghana Policy Fair in Accra, which provided a forum for stakeholders to dialogue on various government policies and programmes.
He explained that Ghana needed a credible biometric data base system for a continuous voter registration process and had so far captured a total of 8.1 million eligible voters by the end of the second phase of the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR), as against 6.5 million persons anticipated.
Mr Akomea explained that persons who were found to have registered more than once would have their names removed entirely from the register, be arrested and prosecuted to face either a jail sentence or a fine, as the court may please.
“There is an adjudicating committee looking at those cases. What is important is to establish whether they were done deliberately or some thought their photographs were not nice so they decided to have another registration just that they can have better photographs. The outcome of the investigations should determine what should be done.”
He urged the public to be responsible and vigilant to prevent attempts of double registration as well as confrontations that usually arose as a result of challenges, adding, “We need a credible biometric data in order to ensure continuous registration of the country’s eligible voter population and ensure a credible voter register for peaceful elections in the country”.
Source: GNA