EC working with local assemblies to clean voter's register

The Electoral Commission (EC) is collaborating with assembly and unit committee members to identify deceased persons within their electoral areas, to enable the Commission to expunge their names from the voters’ register.

The assembly members and unit committee members were tasked to support their evidence with burial certificates, funeral invitations and obituary of the deceased persons, but with deceased Muslims, a Muslim cleric could testify.

Mr. Stephen Opoku-Mensah, the Western Regional Director of the EC, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, said the Commission has always relied on individual Ghanaians to volunteer information on deceased persons in their communities, to enable the EC to expunge them from the voters’ register, but many have failed to do so.

He said the Commission has decided to rely on the assembly and unit committee members through the various metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs), to support the EC to delete names of the deceased.

“Often, people complain that the voter register is over bloated, but they don’t come forward to volunteer information on deceased persons; therefore, this is one way of deleting names of the deceased.”

He said the Commission, after receiving the names of the deceased persons would also undertake due diligence before deciding to expunge them, saying the collection of the names would be done between now until the end of the voter exhibition exercise.

Mr. Opoku-Mensah said, the effort being made across the country, had the backing of the Constitutional Instrument (C I 91) that would govern this year’s general elections