EC will not accept old voters ID cards for new registration

The Electoral Commission (EC) will not accept old voters ID cards as a primary form of identification in the new registration exercise planned for April 2020.

This will be enforced if the new proposal for amendment in the legislation for the registration currently before Parliament becomes law.

The EC on Monday (March 16) sent a proposal to Parliament for an amendment in the Constitutional Instrument 91 (CI) which guides the conduct of elections in Ghana.

In the new proposal the EC is seeking an amendment in Regulation 1, which talks about documents to be accepted as a form of identification as a Ghanaian before registration.

The Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and the Majority Leader in Parliament, Mr Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu made this known in a radio interview with Okay FM on Wednesday morning (March 18, 2020).

He said if it becomes law, the only primary documents to be accepted for registration would either be a Ghanaian passport or a Ghana national identification card (Ghana Card).

It excludes birth certificates

Anyone who does not have any of those two documents would have to get people to vouch for them that they are indeed Ghanaians before they will be registered.

Per the move, anyone holding an old voters ID card issued from 2012 till date cannot use it to register.

This is because of the assumption that some people used national health insurance (NHIS) ID cards for the initial registration which has been outlawed by the Supreme Court and the EC ordered to remove names of people who used it to register.

Even though the EC before the 2016 general elections removed names of those who registered with the NHIS cards as their primary form of identification, Graphic Online understands there is still arguments in some political circles that there are some names still in the current register.

more to follow ....