By The Electoral Commission (EC) has denied the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC)’s allegations of acquiring the serial numbers of the BVR kits used in the limited voter registration exercise.
Last week, the NDC’s Chairman, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, requested the serial numbers, but the EC refused, emphasizing that disclosing such information to external entities could compromise the security and reliability of the electoral process.
During an interview on The Probe on JoyNews, Dr. Rashid Tanko, the Deputy Director of Elections and IT for the NDC, claimed that the party has acquired the serial numbers.
“We’re monitoring everything that is going on at the Electoral Commission, their district offices, and their registration centres. Before the EC could compile the register, we would already have it. Thankfully, we have the serial numbers of every BVR,” he said on Sunday.
Contrary to this, Dr. Serebour Quaicoe, the Director of Electoral Services at the EC, contested the assertion, stating that obtaining the serial numbers of the BVR kits without the Commission’s authorization is not feasible.
“I will be surprised if they have it because it is almost impossible,” he said.
He further raised doubts about the NDC’s intentions behind seeking the serial numbers of the kits. Dr. Quaicoe emphasized that the serial numbers of the BVRs wouldn’t aid in tracking the count of registered voters.
“Each day, before the registration starts, you are given a start-of-day report, and it is daily. Another is released at the close of day. This close-of-day report gives you the list of people who registered and the time that they registered with their ID numbers. So if you sum it up, you’ll have the total number of people who have registered.
“Now, these details will not be provided by having the BVR serial numbers. So for me, unless there is another reason, but their argument that they want to track the registration, it does not work like that,” he stated.
The current limited voter registration process has been tainted by incidents of violence, accusations of registering minors, and reports of bussing.
Dr. Serebour Quaicoe declared that individuals found to have facilitated registrations significantly surpassing the permitted threshold will be swiftly apprehended and brought to justice.
