New voters register: 60.09 percent used Ghana Card; Total registered voters is 16,963,306
The Electoral Commission has announced that a total of 16,963,306 voters have been registered in the mass voter registration exercise which ended last week.
These provisional figures were announced Wednesday by the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Mrs Jean Mensa at a press conference in Accra.
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She explained that the figure is pending processes of de-duplication and adjudication.
More women registered
At the end of the registration exercise, a total 51.73 percent females were registered while males made up of 48.27 percent were registered.
The Upper East Region recorded the highest number of female registrants per population with 54.6 percent and the Western Region had the highest number of male registrants per population with 51.2 percent.
First time voters
At the end of the exercise, 762,944 18-year-olds had registered as first time voters.
This, the EC chairperson said represented 4.5 percent of the total register.
With respect to 19-year-olds, the EC said 612,104 registered to bring the total number of 18 and 19-year-olds to 1,375,048 persons representing 8.1 percent of the total register.
Documents presented
Out of the over 16 million registered, 60.09 percent presented the Ghana Card, 37.99 percent used the guarantor system and 1.92 percent registered with the Ghana passport.
The region with the highest persons who used the Ghana Card is the Oti Region, where 79.1 percent presented the Ghana Card followed by the Eastern Region where 78.5 percent presented the Ghana Card.
The Western North Region came third with 76.9 percent using the Ghana Card.
Guarantor system
With the guarantor system the Upper East Region recorded the highest number with 58.5 percent followed by Bono and Ahafo regions where 57.7 percent used the guarantor system.
Without finger prints
The number of applicants registered without finger prints and would be verified on election day using the facial recognition feature are 61,995 representing 0.37 percent of the total number of registered voters.
The Upper East Region had the highest number of this class of applicants with a total of 9244 found to have problematic finger prints.
The region with the lowest number of this problem was the Ahafo Region which had a total of 813 persons with problematic finger prints.
Challenge cases
The EC Chairperson said a total of 37,762 cases representing 0.20 percent of the total register were challenged with majority of them in the Oti Region followed by the Ahafo and Volta Regions.
Most of the challenge cases were from the border regions, she said.
Minors
The Electoral Commission noted that it has become aware that some minors have found their way unto the register and that it was confident that the challenge process which was still ongoing in various districts will help rid the register of these "illegal" persons.
Mrs Mensa said the number of persons registered as of the end of Day 36 were 16,932,492 and at the end of the two day mop-up exercise, 30,814 persons successfully registered to bring the total to 16,963,306.
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