Let’s exhaust internal mechanisms to clean register before external audit – CODEO

The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) wants all internal mechanisms for cleaning the country’s electoral roll to be exhausted before any possible external auditing is considered.

The Project Lead for CODEO’s voter registration process, Rhoda Osei-Afful said, although the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC) Jean Mensa admitted earlier this week that some minors and foreigners were in the newly compiled register, there are still on-going processes that will help eliminate such names.

“The registration review committee that has been looking into these [challenge] issues since the registration started has already resolved some of the issues…Those who were found to be ineligible are going to be taken out of the register. I think we should allow that process to conclude. Also, there is another process, which is the adjudication on the multiple registration cases. Again, the good thing is that for these two processes, we have political parties who are sitting on these committees and they are going to know what is happening at every point in time,” she said.

Her comments come after the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) called for an immediate independent audit of the new voters’ register compiled by the Electoral Commission.

The party argues that the audit will check de-duplication and multiple registration issues recorded in the register.

But according to Rhoda Osei-Afful, the resolution of all challenges against some registrants and the exhibition of the register will help clean the register.

“Even though the registration is over, the window for cleaning the register is not over because during the exhibition of the register, citizens will have the opportunity to go and object to names they believe should not be on the register. It is at the end of that process that the register will be certified. So I think we have to exhaust the mechanism that we currently have in place and then if we are unable to resolve any of the issues, we can pursue that action with the Commission,” she said.