EC: 'Voter roll had no staple marks'

The Electoral Commission (EC) of Ghana has stated that it found no stapled photos on the electoral roll of the Ketu South constituency during its probe into allegations of a compromised register at a polling station in the constituency.

As part of its arguments for a new voters’ register, the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) petitioned the EC with about 900 names from a polling centre at Ketu South constituency where it alleged the photos of the voters there had been stapled and scanned unto the electoral register.

But speaking on Joy FM’s current affairs programme Newsfile, Saturday January 9, 2016, Mrs Charlotte Osei revealed: “We went into the database, we found their pictures. We didn’t see staple marks. We found the date they were registered, we found the time they were registered. They were in the system, we found their biometric fingerprints, we found the biographic data which showed they were legitimate registrations.”

She revealed that the electoral body only received a petition from the NPP on stapled photos on the register and not on scanned pictures. “That was never the allegation,” she said in response to a question on whether scanned photos had been identified on the register.

“The allegation of the NPP petition of August 18 was that the polling station had about 900 names and that all the pics there were stapled, scanned, and imported into the system.”

She said despite the NPP’s assertions that the said polling station was “illegal” and “fraudulent” their investigations revealed otherwise.

“First we found a Form 1A filled by all these individuals at the polling station. We found the Form 1C printed at the station. We found the sheets which are done at the end of every registration which are signed off and copies are given to the political party agents at the station. We went into the database; we found their pictures.”

She explained that it would be a wrong move for the EC to “just make a determination based on allegations and disenfranchise people”, which she said would be “unconstitutional” and expose the body to a lot of “litigation which is really unnecessary”.