A member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC)’s elections directorate, Peter Boamah Otokunor, says the slow start of the Electoral Commission’s ongoing limited voter registration has been due to the Commission’s inadequate publicity efforts.
Reports of low turnout at various polling stations on the first day of registration, May 7, have prompted Otokunor to call out the EC for not doing enough to create awareness about the registration exercise.
He stated that better publicity would have resulted in a higher turnout and a smoother start to the registration process.
Speaking on the JoyNews AM Show on May 8, 2024, he said that, “This exercise started rather slowly, and it was expected because the Electoral Commission heralded the process with very low publicity, and so you would expect that public awareness would be low, which means that participation would be low.
“But there are areas where we have seen significant participation of citizens because political parties, as part of our effort to get most of our people registered, have engaged in mass mobilisation exercises,” he said.
The former deputy general secretary of the NDC noted that his party had previously raised concerns regarding the location of registration centres.
According to him, the decision to place these centres in district offices could make it difficult for potential registrants to participate.
Mr. Otokunor stressed that, as a result, political parties, had to take on additional responsibilities in order to encourage people to register and ensure the participation of all eligible voters.
“But yesterday, day one, the numbers were rather low. We expected that it would pick up, but not without challenges. We have seen numerous challenges across board. In some instances, the exercise started very late, which got people standing in queues for a very long time. We thought that the registration process would not have such instances, but I mean, we have recorded instances where people have been in queues for a very long time and they had to get registration rather late” he noted.
