Deletion of names: EC urges disgruntled voters to calm down

The Electoral Commission (EC) is urging disgruntled voters whose names have wrongly been deleted from the register to be calm with the assurance that their names would be restored.

The EC says it has received several complaints from prospective voters that they did not use the National Health insurance Scheme (NHIS) cards during the registration in 2012 but their names have been deleted from the register.

The EC says it has deleted over 56,000 names from the electoral roll after the Supreme Court ordered it to clean the register of persons who registered with the NHIS cards.

But some angry residents stormed the EC’s office in Cape Coast in the Central Region on Monday threatening to halt an on-going exercise to re-register those whose names were deleted.

The angry mob accused the EC of scheming to disenfranchise them by deleting their names as part of NHIS registrants even when they never registered with the NHIS cards in 2012.

Reacting to the issue on Onua FM’s Yen Sempa hosted by Bright Kwasi Asempa Tuesday, the Central Regional EC Director, Mrs. Philomena Adusei explained that some of them have forgotten they used the NHIS for the registration because it was 2012.

She said some registrants have even changed their names since then and “when you ask them where their voters’ cards are, they tell you they can’t find it”.

Mrs. Adusei said the EC did not delete the names deliberately as she appealed to those affected to bear with the EC to register them.