The Electoral commission of Ghana has set up a 16-member Adjudication Review committee to manually identify and expunge the names of multiple registrants from the newly compiled register.
The committee which was inaugurated by the Chairperson of the commission, Mrs. Jean Mensah on Wednesday, August 5, 2020 in Accra is tasked with the responsibility of making the newly compiled register credible.
Explaining the mandate of the committee, Mrs. Jean Mensah said the committee would be presented with a number of cases that were flagged at the duplication stage of the multi-faceted mechanism to clean up the voters register. She added that the committee would also determine the eligibility of persons who have similar facial features and fingerprints matching others’ on the register.
“It will also determine the eligibility of persons who have same facial features and same fingerprints matching,” she said.
The committee would also review adjudication reports by electoral supervisors and submit its report to the chairperson of the EC for approval.
The committee which is headed by the EC Deputy Chairman in-charge of Operations, Samuel Tettey has six other officials of the EC, five representatives of political parties and four civil society organizations (CSOs) representatives as its members.
New Patriotic Party (NPP), National Democratic Congress (NDC), Convention People’s Party (CPP), Progressive People’s Party (PPP), and Liberal Party of Ghana (LPG) are the political parties with representations on the committee.
The Chairman of the committee, Samuel Tettey assured that committee’s work would be impartial as the EC has designed rules and regulations to guide their work. “Issues surrounding adjudication are not subjective, that is the reason why we have designed rules and regulations to govern the committee,” he stated.
Meaning while, the mass voter registration which commenced on June 30, 2020 ends today Thursday, August 6, 2020.The EC had announced that it had registered over 15 million prospective voters before the commencement of the last phase of registration exceeding its target. There would however be a mop up exercise at the various district offices of the Electoral Commission to afford an opportunity to those who could not take part in the mass registration exercise.
Speaking on the Midday News on Accra based Joy FM, Director of electoral services at the EC, Dr. Serebour Quiaco said the commission has a programme in place to register Ghanaians who are stranded outside the country as results of the Covid-19 induced border closure but he was quick to add that the law bars those who would register in less than fifty days to the elections from voting.
