voter register
Voter Register

The Electoral Commission has revealed that the registered voters figure is now 17,007,726.
This, according to the Commission is still provisional until after the October 1 registration exercise.

The Commission had earlier said it had registered about 16.9 million voters.

However, at Monday’s press briefing, Chairperson of the EC, Mrs Jean Mensa said an additional 44,420 names had been added and that there was still a deficit of some 7,515 names.

Omission

During last week’s exhibition exercise, there were complains of some missing names in the register.

Explaining, Mrs Mensa said there was a faulty transmission of the data from the USB sticks to the central register after the  general registration exercise.

“In some instances in the process of exportation of data from the USB sticks to the central register, we experienced some faulty transmissions and this led to the shortfall of data in some of the areas. It is important to highlight that although the registration process is IT driven, there is a significant amount of human involvement that may result in errors in every step of the way from the registration to exhibition.”

“In a nutshell, our technology performed optimally as expected. However, in some areas the human element fell short leading to some gaps in the data that we experienced during the exhibition exercise,” she explained.

Resolution of errors

According to Mrs Mensa, the IT department of the EC had employed a technical process called “End of Life” to restore the missing names in the register.

She explained that the process involved the transfer of data on the biometric registration kits that were used during the registration onto flash drives.

“We have successfully retrieved and continue to retrieve valid applicants who were missing from the provisional register,” she said.

Citing cases in Ashaiman and other areas where some names were missing from the register, Mrs Mensa said those names were being restored through the process of inclusion.

“In the case of Ashaiman, we have a deficit of 165 persons and we are expecting that these persons will come through the register through the process of inclusion,” she said.

Exercise successful

Mrs Mensa described the voter exhibition exercise as successful.

According to her, 7,969,887 persons verified their details during the 10-day provisional voters exhibition exercise.

The number constitutes 46.9 per cent of the total number of voters in the provisional register.