Mop-up voters registration: Over 20 people flagged for duplicate attempt in Tamale

More than 20 individuals have been flagged by the Electoral Commission (EC)’s system for attempting to re-register for voters’ identification card during the mop-up exercise.

Mr Bismark Nteh, Tamale Metro Director of the EC, said the system on the first day of the mop-up exercise, identified 15 individuals, who had already registered, and about six on the second day.

He explained that the online registration system automatically detected and rejected duplicate entries.

Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Tamale on Friday, Mr Nteh said despite a slow start, the registration process peaked significantly by afternoon on day one, resulting in the registration of 179 individuals.

He noted that the process faced a major setback on day two of the exercise when a nationwide network outage disrupted the online registration system.

Despite network interruptions, the EC Director stated that when the system was operational, it effectively prevented individuals from attempting to register more than once, which was a notable advantage of the online system over offline methods.

He said initially, officials had low expectations for high turnout given the poor turnout during the last two days of the limited registration exercise.

Mr Nteh said the numbers had exceeded expectations with many new registrants coming from Tamale South.

He said: “It appears that local political parties have been actively reaching out to villages to encourage participation leading to the unexpected high turnout.”

The mop-up registration is a nationwide exercise that began on August 01 and expected to end on August 03.

It is to enable individuals who turned 18 years after the limited voter registration exercise, which ended on May 29 to register.

Source: GNA