New EC CI opens door for multiple voting, ballot stuffing – Dr. Afari-Gyan

Former Chairman of the Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC), Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, has raised concerns about the proposed bill that will be used for the creation of a new voters’ register for the 2024 election.

Dr. Afari-Gyan has said that he is quite concerned about the proposal to have two voters register at various polling stations under the draft Constitutional Instrument (CI) by the Electoral Commission, titled Public Elections (Registration of Voters) Regulations, 2021, graphic.com.gh reports.

The Public Elections (Registration of Voters) Regulations, 2021, laid in Parliament, aims to continuously register Ghanaians who turn 18 using only the Ghana Card as the required document for the exercise.

Another key proposal in the bill is the creation of two voter registers namely the electoral area register and the constituency register.

According to Dr. Afari-Gyan, the current technology for Ghana’s elections is not robust enough to ensure that the use of these two registers will not prevent cheating in the upcoming elections.

He explained that electoral malpractices might occur because the Biometric Verification Devices (BVDs) which will be used to verify prospective voters at the various polling stations have not been interlinked to fish out voters who have already voted.

“Until such time that the BVDs are configured to be interactive in this way, my concern about any of the two registers being used at the polling station on Election Day is that it opens the door more widely to two kinds of voting infractions, namely multiple voting and ballot stuffing,” the former EC boss is quoted to have said by graphic.com.gh.

Aside from the creation of the two voters’ registers, Dr. Afari-Gyan also raised concerns about the use of the Ghana Card as the only primary document required to register voters for the upcoming elections.

Though Parliament is yet to debate the new CI, the minority caucus of Parliament has said that the bill, when passed, would disenfranchise many eligible Ghanaian voters, hence they will reject it.

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