NDC highlights violations by EC in the ongoing voter registration

The National Democratic Congress has outlined instances where officials of the Electoral Commission have violated procedures in the ongoing limited voter registration exercise.

According to the party, their monitoring team has furnished it with numerous breaches by the EC officials in the ongoing exercise.

The General Secretary of the NDC, Asiedu Nketia said this at a presser last Thursday, in Accra.

He claimed that last week their monitoring team informed them that minors were being registered in Birim in the Eastern Region.

“Our monitoring team reported on June 20, 2019, five EC officials were caught registering over 100 minors in the Municipal Chief Executive’s office at Birim Central Municipal Assembly,” he alleged.

In addition, he claimed that newly created registration centres in some constituencies in the Ashanti Region were equipped with Biometric Verification Registration (BVR) kits and that these kits were being operated by non EC officials.

“Adansi Asokwa and Manhyia Constituencies’ new registration centres were created and equipped with offline systems manned by persons who were neither permanent nor temporarily EC officials, busily registering students at Toase Senior High School.”

The NDC believes this issue arose because the EC declined to let the parties know where and the number of BVR devices to be used for the exercise.

The BVR devices, according to the EC is a backup system, which does not require internet connection.

Before the exercise, The EC announced that it will use the Voter Management Systems (VMS) to register eligible voters. The VMS depends on internet connection.

The Commission made it clear that the offline service will be fall on only when they have challenges with the online service.

Again, the NDC raised a case of collusion between the EC and the NPP. The party said on day 6 of the exercise an NPP member was arrested with “already completed registration materials”

The exercise forms part of the EC’s preparations towards the conduct of the 2019 district level elections and the referendum on the election of metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs) in December 2019.

By: Kofi Boateng