Dr. Eric Bossman Asare, Deputy Chairperson of the Electoral Commission
By: Justice Appiah
The Electoral Commission of Ghana says it is untrue that it has added names to the electoral register in a bid to rig the 2024 polls for a particular political party.
According to the commission, those allegations are unfounded and without merit hence should be disregarded by the public.
Addressing the media at a press conference held at the commission’s head office on Monday September 2, 2024, Deputy Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Dr. Eric Bossman Asare said the Electoral Commission has no intention of bloating the register to give political advantage to any party over the other.
“As explained earlier, the cumulative transfer data from 2020, 2023, and 2024 were inadvertently summed up in the registers provided to the political parties. This has been corrected and the revised register will be provided after all corrections have been made. The revised transfer list would be shared with the political parties,” he added.
He stressed that the country has one of the most transparent and inclusive electoral processes in Africa.
“From registration to declaration of results, all our processes are transparent, inclusive and opened to the political parties and the citizenry. Nothing is hidden, there are no secrets as far as our elections are concerned,” the Deputy Chairperson indicated.
Dr. Eric Bossman Asare said any interested party or citizen can with no effort obtain relevant information on all aspects of the electoral processes. Therefore, the suggestion that the peace and the outcome of the election is hinged on the chairperson of the Electoral Commission is completely untrue.
He urged the public to ignore statements which suggest that achieving peaceful election in the upcoming December 7, 2024 polls is somehow in the bosom of the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission.
The Deputy Chairperson of the Electoral Commission emphasized that the commission has nothing to hide and that the provisional voters register is a public document on display which is available online for voters to access in order to verify their details.
He said the final register will be made available to all the political parties as per the law and further entreated individuals who need a copy to apply to the commission.
Dr. Asare acknowledged the challenges associated with the process and further indicated that the preparation of the register is a human endeavour and mistakes are bound to happen since this is not the first time the commission has recorded mistakes during the registration of voters and compilation of the voters’ register.
“This has been the case since 1992, the issues range from missing names, swapped photos and gender, wrong additions or omitted names etc. This is not new,” he said.
He added, the exhibition of the voters’ register as designed by law is meant to correct mistakes and that the law provides for the inclusion of missing names, removal of names that should not be in the register after due process, removal of names that should not be in the exclusion list, correction of gender, proper placement of voters in their polling stations among others.
Dr. Bossman Asare disclosed that since 2020, the commission has made painstaking efforts to clean the register using a four prompt approach through district electoral officers in the various districts, exhibition officers who work at the exhibition centres, voters who go to check their details at the exhibition centres and the IT staff of the electoral commission.
This, he said has ensured a credible register that reflects those who qualify to be on it without leaving any qualified voter out.
He therefore called on the public to reject assertions that the voters’ register is not fit for the upcoming December 7 elections and that it is incurably defective. The Deputy Chairperson of the Electoral commission maintained that the voters’ register is robust and credible.
The commission believes that the final certified register will reflect corrections of all identified errors.
“Who gives out a document and makes it openly accessible to all if the intention is to have illegal persons,”? he queried.