Ashaiman MP’s name in voters register - EC

The Electoral Commission (EC) says claims made by some persons that 21,000 names have been deleted from the voters register in the Ashaiman constituency are untrue.

The EC in a statement copied to GhanaWeb indicated that a number of names may be missing for reasons resulting from incomplete transfer of data as some voters may find their names in the “exceptions list and the multiples list”.

The EC wrote: “Our attention has been drawn to a public statement by the Ashaiman Member of Parliament (MP) on the provisional voters register for Ashaiman Constituency. The MP is on record to have stated that the names of 21,000 registered voters are missing from the register.

“It is for this reason that the law incorporates and makes provision for the exhibition exercise and mechanisms such as the inclusion process, which allows persons who registered but cannot trace their names on the provisional register to file for inclusion,” the statement continued.

The Commission stated that the exhibition exercise which is to end on Friday, September 25, is meant to fix such issues that may arise from the registration exercise.

Ernest Henry Norgbey, the Ashaiman MP, had claimed that 21,000 names including his could not be traced in the voter register for Ashaiman during the ongoing exhibition exercise.

He accused the EC of deliberately removing such names from the register to disenfranchise them.

But the EC in their statement attached a portion of the register for Ashaiman constituency which had the photograph of the MP in the just-ended voter registration exercise.

The commission therefore urged the general public to disregard the MP’s statement as “a deliberate effort to tarnish the credibility of the Commission and the voters register”.