Annual report on the Gold Coast / Colonial Office.

  • Colonial Office
Date:
[1951]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report on the Gold Coast / Colonial Office. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    109/130 (page 103)
    order to avoid burdening the public with too many unfamiliar instruc¬ tions at once. Considerable attention was devoted to the preparation of draft Election Regulations, including consultation with District Commissioners, chiefs and local government officials and by 8th January, 1951, an approved draft of the Regulations was put into force. The organisation for holding the elections was very similar to that used in registration. There were Returning Officers in Rural and Municipal Districts who were always senior Administrative Officers and generally the same officials who had previously acted as Regis¬ tration Officers. Instructions were issued by Chief Commissioners both by notes and by the holding of conferences and a considerable degree of uniformity was achieved, at the same time leaving a fair measure of initiative to individual Returning Officers in the issue of instructions to subordinate staff. As it was considered advisable to hold all the rural primary elections on the same day, namely 6th February (in some of the more remote areas, the primaries were held a day sooner in order to give time for the successful candidates to reach the electoral colleges by 8th February) and as the Election Regulations did not make it possible until the day itself to know whether primary elections would be con¬ tested or not, it was necessary to make arrangements for a contested election in every sub-district. About 2,300 Assistant Returning Officers had therefore to be found. A high proportion of the persons selected were junior officers of the Government Service, but Native Authority staff, Mission teachers and others were also enrolled. The services of all the Assistant Returning Officers were required for about a week for briefing, travelling, making the necessary polling arrange¬ ments and conducting the elections. For the supervision of this junior staff, there were also appointed Senior Assistant Returning Officers on the basis of approximately one for every 10 electoral sub¬ districts. They were mostly officers of the Government Senior Service and they were made responsible for briefing their junior staff and ensuring that proper arrangements were made for the voting. Most of these worked from their own headquarters but a number had to work in more arduous conditions in the remoter areas. The municipal elections also required large staffs, but as they were held after the rural elections it was possible to employ a number of persons for both duties. The problem in the municipal areas was to provide enough polling stations and staff to ensure that a very large electorate (48,773 in Accra) should all have the opportunity to vote in the eleven hours allowed for voting. Provision had further to be made for the identification of voters and for recording the votes of illiterates who were estimated to be more than half the electorate. The municipal areas were divided into wards, each with polling stations. At each polling station there were polling assistants and a presiding officer, and groups of polling stations were supervised by deputy Returning Officers.