The opposition National Democratic Congress has accused the Electoral Commission of under-reporting figures of registered voters in its strongholds and over-reporting in the NPP’s stronghold.

This the party’s Director of Elections, Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, has described as unacceptable and indicting on the EC.

“This deliberate under-reporting described as mistakes would not have been noticed but for the vigilance of our agents”

“…we have discovered discrepancies in the data we collated and that of the EC, some of which the EC has referred to as mistakes emanating from reports submitted by their officers from the regions.

“Interestingly, while the EC under-reported in our strongholds, they over-reported in our opponent strongholds,” he said.

“In the Ashanti Region, the EC has reduced figures they already published by 40,000 following our due diligence…there are more corrections to be made to the Ashanti figures that we will engage the EC on” adding that “ the EC under-reported figures in the Oti region by 10,127 at the end of phase two”

Afriyie Ankrah insisted that the EC at the end of phase four of the registration had under-reported the Oti region’s figures by 14,124.

“ We expect nothing short of total correction of the figures from Oti region by the EC,” he said at a press briefing in Accra.

EC’s response

Calls and a Whatsapp message to the EC’s Public Relations Head, Sylvia Annor, was not responded to.

Case for and against new register

The EC announced last year that it will compile a new register because the current register was bloated while its biometric equipment are also outdated. It is a position the NPP agreed with as it had been campaigning for a new register since 2015.

The NDC, which had been opposing the exercise, went to court initially to stop the register but was forced by the Supreme Court to amend its case.

It subsequently challenged the EC’s decision to exclude the old voter register and birth certificate from as proof citizenship but the court upheld the EC’s case.

This paved the way for the EC to begin the exercise on June 30 and ended it on August 9.

At least 16.9 million people have registered against the EC’s projected 15 million.

The registration exercise has largely been peaceful except for a few violent incidences recorded at some registration centers.

The exercise in the Volta Region’s Ketu-South and Banda in the Bono Region both border constituencies as well as Awutu Senya East have been marred with violence.

The opposition NDC has accused the government of intimidating registrants in their stronghold from registering by deploying military men there.

The government in its defence has said the military officers are there to ensure no foreigner enters the country illegally as Ghana sought to insulate itself against COVID-19.

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