The Electoral Commission (EC) has released the ballot statistics to guide the printing of presidential and parliamentary ballot papers for the conduct of the December 7, 2024 general election.
Per the data published by the Commission, a total of 19,149, 287 ballot papers are to be printed for each of the presidential and parliamentary elections across the 40,975 polling stations.
The figure is a two percentage increase of the 18,772,809 voters on the provisional register for the pending elections.
In a statement issued in Accra yesterday, the EC said that the methodology of adding a percentage increase has been used by the Commission to guide the printing of ballots since 1992.
“The Commission is confident that the methodology relied upon, that is utilising the total number of voters on the Provisional Voters Register plus a two per cent increase to guide the printing of ballots, is adequate and will not result in shortfalls or unnecessary wastage,” the statement signed by Samuel Tettey, Deputy Chair, Operations, explained.
According to the data, the Greater Accra Region leads the pack with 3,765,303 provisional voters on the register with an expected 3,840,815 ballot papers for each level of the polls – presidential and parliamentary.
With 3,295,274 provisional registrations and an allocation of 3,361,386 ballots, the Ashanti Region is the second most populous voter region in the country.
The Eastern Region comes third with 1,810,421 voters and 1,846,718 expected ballots and is followed by the Central Region which has 1,752,160 provisional voters and expected 1,787,305 ballots.
The Western and Northern regions have 1,288,777 and 1,209,934 provisional voters each and expects 1,314,612 and 1,234,196 ballot papers each for the elections.
The Volta Region, the data indicates has 1,023,830 registered voters and expects to have 1,044,362 ballot papers whilst the Upper East Region, with a voter population of 741,288 would have 756,159 ballots.
The Bono and Bono East regions recorded 719,916 and 672,830 registrations against an expected 734,348 and 686,314 ballots respectively.
With 522,506 and 518,365 voters respectively, the Western North and Upper West regions would be issued 532,960 and 528,777 ballots each.
The Oti and Ahafo regions, having 410,607 and 359,284 registered voters apiece, 418,838 and 366,487 ballot papers are to be made available in the regions for the polls.
With the least voter populations in the country, the Savannah and North East regions, completing the ballot statistics with 342,431 and 339,710 voters and an estimated 349,300 and 346,710 ballot papers.
The publication of the ballot statistics is another giant step towards the conduct of the election and would be followed by the actual printing of the ballots upon the certification of the final voters roll.
BY JULIUS YAO PETETSI
