EC adopts mobile checking of voter registration details

The Electoral Commission has intensified efforts at making Election 2012 credible, transparent, free and fair with the introduction of the SMS technology to facilitate the checking of biometric details during the Voter Exhibition period.

Information obtained by the Ghana News Agency on Saturday indicates that the EC SMS platform seeks to expand registered voters access to the Provisional Voters Register through their mobile handsets at the lowest possible network rates.

GNA information indicates that all those who registered during the recent Biometric Voter Registration Exercise can check their information details through the Commission’s specially designed mobile platform through SMS by sending one’s name, ID number, and polling station to designated data base.

The Commission will officially launch the “BVR SMS Checking,” platform on Monday September, 3rd.

Meanwhile, a tour of some Exhibition centers across Accra by the GNA team indicates that the usual Ghanaian apathy towards the commencement of such programmes was at play as it observed a very low turnout.

The 10-day exercise, which starts from Saturday September 1st to Tuesday, September 10, will afford the over 13 million eligible Ghanaians captured during the Biometric Voter Registration to verify and correct details provided during the exercise.

The Exhibition exercise is the final stage of cleaning the Register by removing the names of people who might have passed on; names of minors and non-Ghanaians, if proof is provided.

Various political parties have alerted their officers; especially polling agents to be vigilant throughout the period but reports around the country indicates that most of the centers have been relative quite since morning.

The exercise is taking place simultaneously at all the polling centres across the nation for 10 days.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gabriel Manu, Tema EC District Director has appealed to Ghanaians to help the Commission to clean the Voters’ Register to ensure free and fair elections in December.

Mr. Manu told the GNA in an interview that the public should consider the exhibition exercise as a civic responsibility to deepen Ghana’s democratic credentials by participating in the process of preparing a credible voter’s register.

He urged Ghanaians to take advantage of the exhibition and raise any objections on the registration of minors, non-Ghanaians and those who did not qualify to register, but managed to do so during the biometric registration exercise.

He appealed to bereaved families to report the death of their beloved ones who registered to have their names deleted from the Register.

The Tema EC Director explained that the removal of such names would help prevent the bloating of the Register, and the temptation to vote with the particulars of a dead person.

To ensure the successful deletion of the names of dead people from the Register, an applicant must produce the death and burial certificates of the deceased and their voter ID cards, he stated.

“You cannot present an obituary notice as proof of death, we do not accept that,” he said.

He indicated that to complete the process, the applicant would appear before the Review Officer, who is the District Judge between September 13th and 20th, to prove his claim before the name would be deleted.

Mr Manu said apart from getting the opportunity to raise objections, the exhibition exercise would enable registered voters to check and make corrections on their data, as well as have their names included.

He explained that the inclusion was not meant to register new applicants, but rather those who registered, but somehow had their names missing from the Register.

He encouraged registered voters to actively participate in the exercise to ensure that their data appeared correctly in the Register before the December 2012 General Elections.