The Electoral Commission (EC) has assured political parties that an electronic version of the final new electoral register will be delivered to them in the middle of October 2020.
Per the provisional time of the EC, printing and distribution of the final register is expected to take place between October 10 and November 8, 2020.
EC chairperson, Jean Mensa told journalists that the commission is committed to abiding by its timetable and programmes to deliver free, fair and transparent elections come December.
Registration of voters to compile new voters’ register is expected to be conducted between April 18 and May 30.
This will be followed by de-duplication of voters’ list, which will last from June 1 to 30.
Data processing, splitting of polling stations and extraction of data for Biometric Verification Devices (BVDs) will be done from July 1 to 15.
According to the timetable, between September 15 and 29, exhibition of provisional voters’ register will take place.
Between October 12 and 15, authentication of the voters’ register by Revising Officers will be conducted.
According to the EC, transfer of votes, proxies and special voters will be done between October 15 and 26.
Jean Mensa explained that on the day of voting, each polling station will have two BVDs, with one serving as backup or replacement in case the one being used develops fault.
She said the EC targets to register between 16 and 17 million voters.
The EC chairperson said political parties can make contributions on how the EC can improve its operations but not to tell the EC not to do its work.
Dr Yaw Ofori Adjei, IT consultant to the EC, explained that the EC will use the existing data on voters during registration of voters into the new voters’ register.
“To be registered into the new register, existing voters need to only present their existing ID card to the registration officer.
“Existing voters would not be required to go through the same process as new voters.”
“Their details will be retrieved from the existing database and their biometrics of new facial image and 10 fingerprints captured,” he stated.
According to him, MTN, which is providing network connectivity, has connected EC district offices, with the exception of two which are yet to be done.
According to him, the EC is in the process of selecting a second service provider or redundancy so that in case MTN has network challenges, EC can fall on the second service provider.
