District Level Elections take off

Voting started at 0700 hours this morning at all 30,000 polling stations nationwide for the election of Assembly  and Unit Committee members.

Voters are expected to under-go biometric verification by the electoral officers before they can cast their ballots.

Apart from the verification exercise, the presiding officer is also expected to bring together polling assistants, a security officer and any available polling agent,  and open each of the ballot boxes in their presence, as well as take out the election materials to ascertain that all items are available.

According to officials of the Electoral Commission, every polling station would have two biometric machines,  while every district would have a 20 per cent back-up for all the biometric machines available to ensure that all electoral areas vote in one day.

All biometric devices, ballot papers and other election materials have already been dispatched to the various districts, and officials for the elections have received technical and procedural training for today’s nationwide exercise.

Five officials would man the various polling stations where the simultaneous elections would take place, but in the case of areas where a single poll is being conducted, four of them would be in charge.

In all, a total of 40,000 security personnel have been selected from the various security agencies, and deployed nationwide to ensure peaceful elections.

Source: GNA