The Electoral Commission’s recent antics have further raised serious questions about its credibility as it claims the total number on the register is has miraculously increased from the official numbers stated when the registration exercise was wrapped up some weeks ago.
The Electoral Commission (EC) had claimed it registered 16.9 million, however, on Monday, amidst curious assurances that she was a Christian and hence cannot rig the general elections, the EC Chairperson, Jean Mensah, said the total numbers on the register is now 17,007,726.
The state-owned Daily Graphic reported the number as 17,007,726, while other media outlets are reporting 17,700,726. If the latter figure is true, that will mean a whopping jump of almost 1 million additional names on the register.
If the number of 17,007,726 rings true, however, that will be a curious jump of 44,420 additional voters, in any case, both increases have raised questions about where these numbers are coming from, particularly at a time when the voters’ register has come under serious scrutiny with over 60,000 names of duly registered voters reported missing from the register.
The EC had admitted this the omissions and had scheduled October 1, 2020, to organise another round of voters’ registration to allegedly incorporate the omitted names.
These inexplicable discrepancies are confirming widely-held suspicions that the Electoral Commission was secretly padding the register to allegedly rig the elections for the governing NPP.
According to the EC boss, the new register encountered some faults when transmission of the data from the USB sticks to the central register after the general registration exercise became impossible.
“In some instances in the process of exportation of data from the USB sticks to the central register, we experienced some faulty transmissions and this led to the shortfall of data in some of the areas. It is important to highlight that although the registration process is IT-driven, there is a significant amount of human involvement that may result in errors in every step of the way from the registration to exhibition,” she said at the press conference on Monday, September 28, 2020.
The EC has been accused of deliberately omitting names of people in strongholds of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), while strangely, numbers at the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) strongholds show significantly more than was officially registered.
Critics say the development is a classic blueprint for election rigging in the December 7, presidential and parliamentary elections.