Over 109,000 registered voters will participate in the Special Voting exercise today, Tuesday, December 1, 2020.
All materials for the exercise have been deployed to the specially designated polling stations in the 275 constituencies across the country.
The exercise is organised for personnel from the various security services, electoral officials, journalists, and other voters whose roles would prevent them from voting on December 7, 2020.
The EC is organising the special voting in compliance with provisions of the Public Elections Regulations, 2016 (C.I. 94).
However, electoral officers will not be part of this special voting exercise, as they had not been recruited at the time the EC was compiling the list.
Regulation 23 (1) of C.I. 94 states: “A voter may apply to the returning officer of the constituency in which the voter is registered to be entered as a special voter if, as a result of election duties, the voter will not be able to be present at the polling station where the voter is registered on election day.”
The C.I. further states in Regulation 23(7): “A person whose name is entered on the special voters list shall vote at a polling station specified by the commission and on a day not more than seven days before the polling day appointed by the returning officer and advertised in the manner that the commission may direct.”
According to the EC, it has designated polling centres in all the 275 constituencies for the exercise.
Some 25,000 voters on the special voting list will vote in the Greater Accra Region, while over 16,000 will vote in the Ashanti Region.
The Central and the Eastern regions have 8,578 and 7,900 special voters, respectively, while the Volta and the Northern regions have 7,327 and 6,344, respectively.
The Upper East Region has 5,948; Bono East, 5,691; Western, 5,388, and Bono, 5,067.
The Upper West and the Savannah regions have 3,459 and 3,151, respectively, with the Ahafo Region recording 2,801 people.
The Oti Region has 2,795; Western North, 1,758, and North East, 1,454.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com