Special Voting today
Security personnel and staff of the Electoral Commission (EC) who will be on duty on Election Day will take part in special voting Tuesday.
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The process comes two days ahead of the main election set for Friday, December 7.
Personnel of the Ghana Armed Forces, the Ghana Police Service, the Ghana Immigration Service, the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Service, the Prisons Service and the Ghana National Fire Service who will provide security for the main elections are expected to cast their ballot.
Applications for today’s voting were received by returning officers of the EC in the various districts.
According to the Public Relations Officer of the EC, Madam Sylvia Annor, the special voting would be conducted at a designated point in all constituencies where applications had been received.
The special voting process is backed by Section 21 of Constitutional Instrument (CI) 75 which gives the right to all members of the security services and the EC who would be performing duties on the day of elections to apply for an opportunity to vote earlier.
Madam Annor said all the materials needed for the special voting process had already been dispatched to the respective polling centres.
She told graphic.com.gh that ballot papers for Tuesday's voting would not be counted but put under tight security until the entire election was over.
“As we’ve always done, we are going to add the ballots from today’s voting to those of the main one to be counted as one. Today’s ballots will be under tight security from now till then,” she said.
Madam Annor said although Tuesday's voting would be undertaken by members of the security agencies, ample security would be provided to ensure that the ballot papers were safe.
She said the voting would come off from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. at all the centres.
On the main elections, she said everything which needed to be done was already in place and gave an assurance that ballot papers, ballot boxes, verification materials and all other materials had reached almost all the various constituencies.
"From where the EC stands, we are ready. We have almost delivered all the ballot papers and boxes to their respective stations and the training of all the people we are working with is expected to end within the week. All is going as planned,” she said.
On measures to reduce the number of spoilt ballots, as witnessed in the 2008 general election, Madam Annor indicated that public education had been intensified to reverse the trend.
According to her, ballot papers for these elections had little black lines separating the candidates from one another and so it would take a deliberate effort to thumbprint wrongly.
