About 109,556 persons are expected to turn up for the special voting exercise today across the 275 constituencies of the country.
The special voting list covers security personnel, media personnel and election officials who will be unable to vote at the polling stations where they registered on December 7.
The results of the special voting, which is only allowed for general elections, will however not be declared until after the general election.
Speaking at the Let the Citizens Know encounter with journalists yesterday in Accra, the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), Mrs Jean Mensa, said the special voters list had been sent to various agencies that applied and published same on the website of the Commission. She entreated them to verify from the website of the Commission before turning up at the polls.
“It is also important to mention that the Commission received a number of names well after deadline. While some were considered, others came a little too late after the data base had been frozen. Once the data base is frozen no changes/ transfers can be made. All lists received after the data freezes could not be processed,” she said.
“We entreat the public to disregard information going around on the social media by some ‘experts’ that the Commission has prevented security agencies from registering. This is not true. Every Officer who applied on time, and provided the correct ID card number was duly registered,” Mrs Mensa added.
Voters register
Meanwhile, a total of 17,027,641 Ghanaians are expected to vote in the presidential and parliamentary elections on December 7.
The Chairperson said out of the total number of registered voters, females constitute 8,810,283, representing 51.74 per cent, while males are 8,217,358, representing 48.26 per cent.
She said the new register has the Greater Accra Region with the highest number of female and male registrants while the lowest number of female and male registrants is North East Region.
She further gave a breakdown of the number of registrants as Western-1,187,333; Central-1,567,756; Greater Accra-3,528,996; Volta-924,116; Eastern-1,641,050; Ashanti-3,019,178; Western North-468,683; Ahafo-316,970; Bono-653,378; Bono East-594,610; Oti-358,552; Northern-1,050,016 and Savannah-298,404; Upper West-469,753; North East-289,529 and Upper East-659,317.
Multiples list
The EC Chair further said the total number of multiple registrations stands at 15,860, adding that of the number, the amount of unique individuals who conducted the multiple registration is 7,890.
“I emphasize this to allay the fears or perception that the Commission deliberately removing names of registrants from the Register. When a person with a unique set of fingerprints registers multiple times, this is flagged and picked up by the system and the names and details are isolated on the Multiples list,” Mrs Mensa said.
“This list is generated by the ABIS system when it detects multiple registrations by a unique individual when the same set of fingerprints appears for persons bearing different names. The system picks this up and isolates the registrant. This is not done by staff of the commission,” she explained.
On the exceptions list, the EC chairperson described as false the notion that it deliberately removed persons from the register and placing them on the exceptions list.
This exceptions list refers to unique individuals who conducted various forms of electoral malpractices, including underage registration, registration by foreigners, and registration by persons not ordinarily resident in the area where they wish to register
“To date, we have a total number of 13,997 persons on the exceptions list. It is important to note that the list was developed as a result of the citizens at the grass root level challenging and objecting to registration of certain persons,” the EC boss said.
Missing list
The EC boss said that persons whose names are captured in the missing list of the Commission would be given the opportunity to vote after going through the manual voting processes.
“In all, 830 persons have their names on the commission’s missing list and will be granted the chance to exercise their franchise without interference,” noted Mrs. Mensa.
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