The Electoral Commission of Ghana has denied claims that it intends to deploy faulty Biometric Verification Devices (BVDs) to the strongholds of the New Patriotic Party for the December 7 general elections.
At a news conference in Tamale on Friday, acting General Secretary of the NPP, John Boadu accused the Commission of an agenda to deploy faulty BVDs to its strongholds, and served notice the party would reject any such plot.
A statement issued by the Commission Saturday, however, rejected the claims, which it described as “non existent plot”, noting the Commission “does not deploy faulty BVDs for elections.
“All our BVDs are fully tested to ensure their optimum functionality before they are deployed for electoral activities,” the statement signed by the EC’s Head of Communications, Eric Dzakpasu said.
The Commission said it is “totally inaccurate” for any political stakeholder to claim it has uncovered any such plot by the Commission, and urged such persons to provide details of the supposed plot for pre-emptive measures to be taken
Each of the 28,992 polling stations, the Commission explained, would have two of the BVDs on the election day, in addition to sufficient backups at each of the 216 EC district offices across the country.
“As a result, we do not expect any polling station to operate without a fully functioning BVD,” it added.
According to the EC, the machines that will be used for the elections are the same ones used in all the by-elections conducted since 2013 and the district level elections in 2015, which it said, caused no challenge to the process.
It has assured that a total of 70,000 well tested BVDs will be deployed on the election day, adding all staff who would be operating the machines are being trained to prepare them for the task ahead.
“Additionally, 4 technicians will be deployed to each of the 216 district offices to provide technical support and rapid response to each of the polling stations to deal with any unforeseen technical challenges at any polling station within the district on election day, it said.
The Commission further explained that in the event of failure of any of the machines to verify a registered voter, provision has been made for manual verification of the voter in order not to disenfranchise anyone.
Meanwhile, the Commission has urged stakeholders in the election to make use of the ‘Special Walk-in Service’ it has created to table their concerns for discussions and resolution.
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