District Assembly Elections get off to slow start
Voting in the 2015 Local Level Elections to elect assembly and unit committee members has opened across the country, however to a very slow voter response.
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Voting kicked off at 7am with election officials and materials ready for the process at various polling centres within the Osu Clottey District of the Greater Accra Region, however voter response has been anything but encouraging.
Presiding officers and representatives of candidates think the day is too young yet and expect patronage to pick-up in the course of the day.
At the Roxy Cinema Hall polling centre, only two voters had cast their ballots one-and-half hours into voting, with the centre expecting 274 registered voters.
Similar stories were recorded at adjoining centres – Additrom School where 574 registered voters are expected had recorded 16 votes; Leteman’s Bakery polling centre with 1015 registered voters had recorded 17 votes as at 8:47am and the Crystal City polling centre had no more than 15 from an eligible voters of 906.
Monitored reports from other centres across the country also show a slow response so far.
The Greater Accra Region is noted to be the worst performer when it comes to patronage of the Local Level Elections and has persistently trailed the other regions since the inception of the system in 1988.
Old voters’ register delays elections in Koforidua
From Koforidua, Naa Lamiley Bentil reports that voting in the District Level Elections in most parts of the Eastern Regional capital started after 8:00 a.m instead of the 7:a.m because the centres had an old register and could therefore, not verify the names of voters.
The morning hitch saw a number of people who had wanted to cast their ballot before going to work disappointed as they could not do so and is likely to affect turnout.
The Presiding Officer at the SSNIT Flats Centre, Mr Enoch Asiamah Yirenkyi, told the Daily Graphic that voting started at about 8:20 and as at 11:00 a.m, only 42 people out of the expected 851 voters had cast their ballot.
Mr Yirenkyi expressed the hope that the process might pick up by late afternoon to see more residents in and around the SSNIT flats exercise their franchise.
Similarly, voting at the Kwaku Otchere Centre was delayed for over an hour as the officers had to wait for the arrival of an updated voters register.
According to the Presiding Officer, Mr Wilson Yeboah, voting started at 8:40 a.m and as at 11:30 a.m, 107 had cast their ballot out of a total of 926 on the register.
"Turn out is not too encouraging but we hope it will pick by late afternoon", he stated.