The Electoral Commission (EC) has directed all its district officers to switch to offline mode of registration starting on Thursday, May 9.
The limited voter registration exercise, which commenced on Tuesday, May 7, has been fraught with many technical challenges, which have necessitated the decision to switch to offline registration mode.
This was contained in a communiqué from the EC released on Wednesday, May 8.
“The Commission apologises for the delays experienced this afternoon.”
“The Commission assures its stakeholders that should there be a backlog of voters at the end of the twenty-one (21) day process, the registration exercise will be extended beyond the 27th of May, 2024 deadline.”
EC targets over 620k first-time voters
Meanwhile, the Commission is seeking to register about 623,000 first-time voters onto the electoral roll in the ongoing limited voter registration exercise across the country ahead of the December 7 national elections.
The 21-day exercise commenced today [Tuesday, May 7] in all 258 district offices of the Commission. The exercise is expected to end on Monday, May 27, 2024.
Moreover, the Commission has set up additional 785 centres to cater for individuals who may have difficulty accessing the EC’s district offices.
Also, 25 public universities have been included as registration centres.
“Permanent centres will be set up at the District offices while mobile teams would be used to register eligible applicants in the difficult-to-access Electoral Areas. The list of registration centres will be provided to the Political Parties no later than twenty-one (21) days to the Registration exercise,” the EC noted.
The Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), Jean Mensa, has emphasised the importance of compiling a credible voter register as election 2024 beckons.
She said that without a credible voter register, there can never be transparent elections.
Addressing a news conference in Accra on Monday, May 6, ahead of the 2024 limited voter registration exercise, Jean Mensah said the EC is poised to deliver a credible and transparent election.
Read also: Limited Voter Registration: We’ve made arrangements against ‘dumsor’ – EC
“As a commission, we remain poised and ready to deliver credible, transparent and peaceful elections and electoral processes starting with the 2024 registration exercise.
“It is well known that the voters register is a bedrock of an election. Without a credible and accurate voter register, there can be no transparent and acceptable elections,” she stated.
In addition, Madam Jean Mensa noted that in the event of “unforeseen circumstances”, the Commission would be able to manually register voters, where their data would be stored on a secured pen drive to be transferred to its database.
“We are trying hard to, we’ve made arrangements to ensure that we don’t have challenges because of dumsor. What we’ve done is to have all our district offices rent generators so that in the event where there’s dumsor, that can kick in.
“However, should there be the unexpected, we would switch on to the offline and by offline it means the voters will be registered and their details will be put on a pen drive and that will be copied in our offices when the light returns, so the registration will not be disrupted,” she explained.
