EC To Pilot Biometric Voting Process

The Electoral Commission (EC) is to conduct a two-day piloting of the Biometric Voter Verification Process in some selected polling stations in all the 10 regions. The Exercise is scheduled to begin tomorrow and end on Sunday, November 4, and expected to stimulate the voting process. The EC is expected to purchase 30,000 biometric verification equipment to be used for the elections on December 7. According to the deputy Chairman of the EC in-charge of Operations, Kwadwo Sarfo Kantanka, the exercise would come off between 7 am to 5 pm each day. It would be open only to registered voters in the selected polling stations and are therefore being entreated to turn out in their numbers to go through it. Mr. Kantanka implored the registered voters to take their biometric voter ID cards to the polling centres, for the exercise. The Director of Information, Communication and Technology of the EC, Mr. Hubert Akumiah, told the Ghanaian Times that the verification machines would be powered by batteries with back-ups, therefore there would be no cause to worry about power failure. The exercise aims at ensuring that the biometric machines have been properly tested to enable the EC to rectify problems which might arise on the voting day. The exercise would also be used to educate the electorate on the processes they would go through before casting their votes on December 7. Over 14 million voters are expected to cast their votes at appropriately 23,000 polling centres across the country on December 7.