EC has never registered voters without assigning them to a polling station – Serebour

Posted by
Check your BMI

Director of Electoral Services at the Electoral Commission (EC), Dr Serebour Quaicoe, has denied allegations that the Commission registers voters without assigning them polling stations.

According to him, voter registration was never completed till one is assigned to a polling station.

“Since I joined the commission, we have never registered anybody without assigning the person to a polling station so I don’t know how that one came forth.

“If you look at the current law it says that the registration will be done at the district offices in addition the commission will do it at other places as the situation demands so clearly, we are aware of that,” he said on Newsfile on Saturday.

His comment was in response to a question on how the EC intends to solve the problem of long distances to the district registration centres.

On the back of this, the Director of Electoral Services explained that people always travel long distances for other activities for which reason he is baffled by the reaction when citizens are asked to do same for voter’ registration.

“It is not interesting that these very people we are talking about when they finish JHS, they go to secondary schools when the secondary schools are not within the settlement but nobody complains about that.

“Anybody who wants to travel outside the country goes to Accra to book a flight nobody has a problem. Anybody who wants to grab other documents, they go to the district capitals to do that, there is no problem but when it comes to Electoral Commission, then distance becomes a problem,” he lamented.

Dr Serebour said to address the issue, the election management body is willing to travel to every part of the country to carry out the registration once they are alerted of the number of people needed to be enrolled.

“Our intention is that if you are an opinion leader if you are an MP, if you are an assemblyman, there is a distance between your community, you gather your people, give us the information that in my village, we have this number of people who are 18 years but they will not be able to travel.

“If we have to travel, one day or two days, we will move the team there to come and capture you,” he said.