Electoral Commission begins limited voter registration exercise today

The Electoral Commission will today, Tuesday, May 7, begin the limited voter registration exercise for first-time voters and persons who wish to own a voter card.

The 21-day exercise will end on May 27, 2024.

Chairperson of the EC, Madam Jean Mensa, says the exercise aims at registering approximately 623,000 first-time voters across the country.

“The registration will be from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. And that gives us the figure of 623,000 that we have put there. That is not to say that we cannot go beyond that. We did mention that in 2023, we projected 700,000 people to visit our registration centres.”

Jean Mensa further said the commission has arranged for all district offices to rent generators in case of power outages, these generators will kick in to ensure continuous voter registration services.

She explained that its offices will switch to an “offline” mode, where voters will be registered manually, and their details will be stored on a pen drive if the generators fail.

“We are trying hard to, we’ve made arrangements to ensure that we don’t have challenges because of dumsor. What we’ve done is to have all our district offices rent generators so that in the event where there’s dumsor, that can kick in.

“However, should there be the unexpected, we would switch on to the offline and by offline it means the voters will be registered and their details will be put on a pen drive that will be copied in our offices when the light returns, so the registration will not be disrupted.”