1.4 million more added to voter register

THE names of almost 1.4 million Ghanaians have been added to the electoral roll, bringing the number of eligible voters to 13,865,121.
These voters are expected to cast their ballot in the 2012 general election to choose the next President and Members of Parliament if the Electoral Commission (EC) does not re-open the voters register before the election.
Vital statistics on the 2010 limited voter registration exercise by the EC made available to the Daily Graphic show that the Ashanti Region recorded the highest number of voters of 247,825, followed by the Greater Accra Region with 247,007 voters.
The rest are: Western Region, 142,888; Central Region, 124,930; Volta Region, 105,565; Eastern Region, 148,726; Brong Ahafo Region, 131,030; Northern Region, 137,119; Upper East Region, 69,189 and Upper West Region, 38,084.
Of the total number of fresh voters, 704,457 are males and 687,906 are females, while, in the case of age, 464,342 are 18, 298,684 are 19, while 628,337 are above 20.
According to the Public Relations Director of the EC, Mr Owusu Parry, the process of deleting the names of dead people from the list was ongoing, for which reason the total number of voters was likely to reduce.
It is expected that the 1,392,363 people who registered in the June 2010 exercise will cast their first ballot in the district assembly elections scheduled for December 28, 2010 to elect assembly and unit committee members.
The number of registered voters stood at 12,472,758 during the 2008 general election.
The number of registered voters since the inception of the Fourth Republic has been increasing significantly over years.
In 1992, the number of people who registered was 8,229,902, followed by 9,279,605 in 1996.
In 2000, 10,698,652 registered to cast their votes, while in 2004 10,354,970 voters registered.