Soldiers to vote in special arrangement
The Military High Command has made special arrangements to enable officers and men of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), who could not vote on the two designated days for special voting to vote on December 7, 2016.
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A special form has been placed at the Burma Hall voting centre at Burma Camp to enable affected officers and men of the GAF to provide their names, polling stations and voter identification numbers.
According to the Presiding Officer of the Special Voting Burma Hall C, Mr Seth Osei Obese, 535 persons voted last Thursday.
He said 3,330 people were expected to vote at La Dadekotopon but 2,300 voted last Thursday.
Today
Mr Obese said 40 people had voted as of 2 pm yesterday, while 20 persons were turned away because their names were not in the register.
However, they have since written down their names for deployment to the various constituencies they registered.
They are thus expected to operate from those constituencies on the voting day.
Asked why those officers and men did not find their names on the register, Mr Obese said “the only reason is that they did not give their details for special voting.They were not happy but since a lot are military men - the Military High Command will deploy them at where they registered so they can vote.
Confirmed
Confirming the arrangement to the Daily Graphic in Accra yesterday, the Director of Public Relations of the GAF, Colonel Eric Aggrey-Quashie said the arrangement was meant “to alert their units to deploy them to places that they can vote.
“This is to ensure they are not sent far away from their voting centres,” he added.
EC Position
Earlier the Electoral Commission (EC) issued a statement on its Facebook page highlighting what qualified one to vote as a special voter.
It listed them as voters whose names are included in either the earlier Special Voters list or the updated one provided to the political parties, persons who transferred their vote and whose name appeared on the Special Voters list but who could not vote on December 1, 2016 and persons whose names appeared on the Special Voters list in the Constituency where they were registered to vote.
“The Commission never stated anywhere that it was going to compile a new list of Special Voters for today's exercise.
“Please note that if your name does not belong to any of the above categories, then you must wait to vote at your polling station on December 7.
“Being an officer of the security agencies does not give you an automatic right to vote anywhere you wish to. Procedures must be complied with,” the statement noted.
Smooth Voting
Touching on the voting exercise, it said “at midday, all our regional directors confirmed that voting has gone on smoothly at all the 275 constituencies except the few cases of some officers whose names are not on the special voters list. That is not the fault of the Commission.”
“But for such persons, they still have the chance to vote on Election Day. We have advised their respective high commands to deploy them to work at the polling stations where they registered, so they can vote,” the statement added.
