The Electoral Commission (EC) has announced plans to introduce an online exhibition of the Provisional Voters’ Register (PVR) at no cost to registered voters.
This is to enable voters to report on anomalies with their details within a time frame to be made available to the public, the Commission said, adding, “The voters’ register will be displayed online until election day.”
This comes amid concerns from the National Democratic Congress (NDC) regarding potential issues with the PVR.
Responding to a petition from the NDC, the Chairperson of the EC, Jean Mensa, indicated that it would not be feasible to conduct another physical exhibition of the voters’ register.
“Whilst the Commission is not opposed to undertaking another physical exhibition of the corrected PVR in the 40,000 plus Exhibition Centres, given the time it takes to print and distribute the PVR (three to four weeks), it will not be feasible to achieve this due to the limited time to the general election,” she explained. Standoff
Mrs. Mensa assured the NDC and the public that it has largely resolved all the discrepancies identified in the PVR, noting that it achieved “this in 2020 and will do it again in 2024.”
“We invite your team to the discussion table as we believe it will afford us the opportunity to demonstrate to you that the discrepancies detected in the PVR have been resolved,” the EC told the NDC.
“As a Commission, we are of the view that the existing legal and administrative processes for cleaning the PVR have not been fully exhausted to justify the call for a forensic audit,” she argued.
The EC boss entreated the NDC and the public to trust them to deliver their mandate.
She reaffirmed the Commission’s commitment to transparency, stating it has nothing to hide and continues to open its doors and processes to the public.
According to her, all data, from registration to transfers and amendments, are retained in the Voter Management System (VMS), allowing for accountability and tracking of voter movement.
The NDC had identified 15,000 instances of unidentifiable voter transfer paths, but the Commission notes that it has yet to receive evidence supporting these claims.
The EC boss acknowledged that network errors during data extraction may have corrupted some data in the PVR.
However, she assured that affected registers were promptly regenerated during the exhibition.
Mrs. Mensa rejected accusation of lack of transparency in the work of the Commission, saying that “It is well known that the Commission is transparent.”
“It has nothing to hide and continues to open its doors and processes, from registration to the declaration of results to the general public,” she added.
“As explained above, all data, from registration to transfers and amendments are not deleted from the Voter Management System. All voters registered in the VMS can be accounted for. There exists a trail that explains each voter’s movement,” she stressed.
Source:dailyguidenetwork.com