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Ghana�s Electoral Commission (EC) is auditing the voters� register which was compiled during the limited registration exercise a few months ago, according to official information released. In a letter dated 26th September 2014 and signed by Acting Director of Public Affairs of EC, Mr. Christian Owusu-Parry, which The National Forum (TNF) had intercepted, the Commission had invited political parties to present their representatives to witness the process following widespread cases of multiple registration. The auditing process, according to the letter, commenced on Monday, October 6 and is expected to end on Friday October 10, 2014. The letter read in part that �The Electoral Commission will adjudicate on all cases of suspected multiple registrations detected in the database following the matching of all fingerprints in the database after the revision of the voters� register.� It would be recalled that TNF carried a story a few weeks ago on the limited registration exercise under the banner �ECs limited registration � Multiple names mar register,� in which the paper was emphatic that the recent limited registration exercise was marred with multiple names stating inter alia: �In the recent limited voter registration exercise undertaken by the Electoral Commission (EC), credible sources within the Commission have revealed widespread multiple registration of names in the register.� At the time, the EC failed to comment on the story but the auditing processes now underway as a result of multiple registration, has vindicated TNF. The restricted registration exercise was to afford persons who had turned 18 years or couldn�t register in the 2012 biometric registration process the opportunity to gain admission unto the voters� register. The EC had estimated based on the figures from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) after the 2010 population census that about 1 million new entrants would be eligible to register. Contrary to this estimation, The National Forum had gathered from a very credible source close the EC that several names appeared in multiples, which had ballooned the figures in the register above the 1 million projected, giving rise to the need for efficient DEDUPLICATION.� At the end the adjudication process, it is expected that offenders or culprits would be referred to the appropriate institutions of state with prosecutorial powers to deal with them to serve as a deterrent in future registration exercises. Multiple registration is an offence as per the C.I.72 which guides registration of voters as contained in Regulation 27 sub reg. b and states in part that �registers as a voter more than once either at the same registration centre or at different registration centres, commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine of not more than five hundred penalty units or to a term of imprisonment of not more than two years or to both.� The EC has not yet been able to present a single offender to the prosecuting Authorities or the Police to make a case against any of those violated this law in 2012 and bring them to justice at least to deter others from doing same subsequently. TNF is worried over the tendency for people to keep making breaking the law for failure to enforce same; human beings would naturally offend the law especially when they realise its enforcement is weak. A State Prosecutor who prefers anonymity has advised on this matter; �let the EC handover all offending cases to the State departments with prosecutorial power to do their job. All the EC is required to do is provide the needed evidence to show committal of the offence and the rest would follow�. The dilemma that would be confronting the EC is what to do all those who would be found culpable of this offence once it decided to waive the possible prosecution of its temporary staff who violated an entrenched provision of the Law, Article 49, for failing to sign the results sheets in the 2012 elections was discovered during the famous 2012 presidential petition hearing. A political pundit has suggested that should the EC be bold to submit to the Police Service or the Attorney General�s department the entire list of people suspected to have violated the electoral laws in one way or the other, for their decision to prosecute or not, the EC would be sending a very strong signal to erring citizens to desist from doing that in future. �It is the attitude of the EC not to submit the list of offenders to the prosecuting authorities, in part, that gives rise to more electoral offences recorded after every election and registration process. �After the submission of this list to the prosecuting authority, tests could also be run against other national data collected namely the National Health Insurance Scheme or the National Identification Authority to ascertain the consistency or otherwise of information provided by the same persons for clarity and sanitization of our national data system as well as rid our nation of duplicitous characters,� the prosecutor stated.