Voters Register Ready, August

THE ELECTORAL Commission (EC) has finished collating data of the 13 million people captured in the biometric voters� register. The register is slated for exhibition in August, EC officials have disclosed. The exhibition will pave the way for a comprehensive voter�s register since voters would be given the opportunity to verify their inclusion in the register that will form the basis of the country�s new electoral database. According to Anthony Amedzakey, the Commission�s Acting Director of Information Technology, the EC is currently correcting data that was wrongly entered in the register at the EC�s data control centre. �We have to correct the data. Some people (EC�s data entry personnel) didn�t enter the correct information, so we have to correct them,� he said on Tuesday when regional organizers of the various political parties toured the facilities at the Accra headquarters of the election regulator to acclimatize themselves with its activities. Meanwhile, the EC is also tackling the grievances captured in the challenge forms of the registration exercise. These two processes should be completed by the close of this month, Mr. Amedzakey told DAILY GUIDE. The commission has almost completed addressing the various complaints raised in the challenge forms across the entire region. Indeed Eastern region is the only region left to be sorted out. These myriads of processes are aimed at ensuring that Ghana�s choice to opt for a biometric voters� registration would not be compromised. With barely five months to the December 7 general elections, the general public has expressed concerns about the pace of work at composing the biometric voters register which was conducted for the first time in the country in April. So far approximately 13 million people were successfully registered even though there were suspicions that some unscrupulous politicians might be gunning at manipulating the register to their advantage. The EC thinks the possibility is highly unlikely, given the massive foolproof mechanisms deployed by it to counteract issues that might breach the credibility of the biometric register and by extension, the electoral process. In fact majority of the more than 100 regional political party representatives were impressed by the various fail-safes deployed for the biometric register. To begin with the data is stored in servers whose accessibility by unauthorized persons is almost impossible. There are several backups situated in various secret locations to prevent intrusion. The newly constructed data centre of the EC is stocked with modern data and biometric equipment. These constitute an investment worth over $100million. During the tour of the facilities, political party representatives were obviously impressed by the amount of detail that was put into the biometric voter systems. The New Patriotic Party Western Regional representative could not hide his satisfaction with the EC, �I am impressed by what I have seen,� he stated.