Help Us Clean Voters� Register - EC Appeals To Ghanaians

Mr Gabriel Manu, Tema District Director of the Electoral Commission (EC), has appealed to Ghanaians to help the Commission clean the Voters� Register to ensure free and fair elections in December. Mr Manu reminded the public to see it as a civic responsibility to participate in the exhibition of the Register, which begins on Saturday, September 1 and ends on Tuesday, September 10. Mr Manu, who made the appeal in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on Friday, explained that the period for the exhibition include weekends, adding that the polling centres would be opened from 0700 hours to 1800 hours. He urged Ghanaians to take advantage of the exhibition to raise objections on the registration of minors, and non-Ghanaians, among others, who did not qualify to register, but managed to do so during the biometric registration exercise. He further appealed to bereaved families to make time to report the death of their beloved ones who registered for their names to be deleted from the Register. The Tema EC Director explained that the removal of such names would help prevent bloating of the Register, and the temptation to vote with the particulars of a dead person. To ensure the successful deletion of the name of a dead person from the Register, an applicant must produce death and burial certificates of the deceased, and their voter ID cards, he stated. �You cannot present an obituary notice as a 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 inclusion was not meant for the registration of new applicants, but rather those who registered, but might have had their names missing from the Register. He gave the assurance that all the 318 polling centres in the three constituencies in the district would be opened for the exhibition exercise, adding that the centres include 135 in Tema East, 115 in Tema West and 68 in Kpone. 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.