Election 2020: 109,557 persons voting today

The Electoral Commission (EC) has announced that 109,557 persons are expected to take part in the Special Voting today, 1 December 2020, ahead of the general polls next week.

The Special Voting is taking place at 311 Electoral Commission designated centres across the country.

The early voters are personnel of the Ghana Armed Forces, National Intelligence Bureau (NIB), National Security, Ghana Immigration Service, Ghana National Fire Service, and Information Services Department.

The rest are personnel of the National Ambulance Service, Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority, Prisons Service, Ghana Journalists Association, Ghana Police Service and National Media Commission.

“The final Special Voting list contains one hundred and nine thousand five hundred and fifty-seven persons (109,557 Persons) from the various security agencies, media house and the Electoral Commission. It is instructive to note that this is the highest number the Commission has recorded for Special Voting in its history,” EC chair, Jean Mensa, said at a press conference on Monday.

She said the Commission is ready to carry out a successful exercise on 7 December.

“To date our officers have been recruited and trained and we stand in readiness to deliver a smooth, seamless and peaceful and orderly process. All materials necessary have been distributed in sufficient quantities and these include COVID materials,” Mensa stated.

“Stringent COVID-19 protocols will be put in place and observed, the biometric verification has been prepared and we’ve deployed devices as a Commission. We expect a mere 100 percentage turn out, and we are confident that the outcome will be peaceful, credible, orderly, seamless and transparent with God being our helper.”

Declaration of results

The EC chair further reiterated that adequate measures have been put in place to ensure the results of the election are declared on time to avoid unnecessary tension.

“Ordinarily, the intention of declaring elections is to rarely minimise tension, after all if you have results… why wait on the results? We all know that our media houses have in the past been able to present the results within some 10 hours of the polls,” Mensa told journalists.

She said the EC should rather be commended and supported for putting in place measures for a peaceful exercise in the run-up to the general elections.

“So, if you put in place systems to ensure that you receive the results on time, why the panic. I think the panic should rather be if the EC says it will declare the results after one week, then you should be panicking,” she added.

“But if we are bringing in efficiency and allaying the fears and suspicion of people, I think that this should be commended and encouraged, we should all work together to achieve this.”

* Asaase Radio 99.5 – tune in or log on to broadcasts online
Follow us on Twitter: @asaaseradio995
#asaaseradio #TVOL