Polling agents not part of 2016 Special Voting Day

The essence of certain categorizes of persons voting a few days to the actual voting day is to enable them move freely on that national voting day.

These categories include: security personnel, medical staff and until the 2012 elections, journalists.

Security personnel like the military; police; immigration; fire service and prison service are always deployed across the country to ensure peace on the voting day.

The same applies to doctors; nurses and laboratory technicians. Journalists also leave their duty posts and travel across the country.

In 2012, a particular political party pushed for the removal of journalist’s from the list of those to vote on that special day.

Mrs. Charlotte Osei, the Chairpersons of the Electoral Commission (EC) has revealed that for this year’s elections, journalists will be restored to the list of those to vote on the special voting day.

There have also been calls polling agents to also be included in the list on those to vote on that special day.

However, the Daily Dispatch believes polling agent should not be included in the special voting day list.

Polling agents are supposed to be selected from their supporters at the polling station level.

A serious political party should be able to have at least a pool of six persons of average ability from which they can select four persons to protect the party’s interest during the 10 hours of voting and three or four hours thereafter.

In subsequent issues, the Daily Dispatch will be putting up the arguments for against polling agents being put on the special voting day list. For example, is it necessary to have more than 500,000 polling agents voting on that special day?