Timing of limited registration exercise right - EC

The Electoral Commission of Ghana has strongly defended its timing of the just ended limited registration exercise.

The EC maintains there could not have been any appropriate time for the exercise. The 10-day exercise aimed at capturing names of fresh voters onto the electoral roll was fraught with some challenges.

Many students raised concerns about the timing of the exercise claiming it clashed with examination period. Appeals for an extension of the exercise for students and others who missed out to register have been flatly rejected by the commission.

Speaking at the Starr FM’s Voters’ Voice programme at the University of Ghana, Director of Administration of the EC Christian Owusu-Parry said circumstances leading to the exercise constrained the commission.

“There couldn’t have been any other time than the time that we did the registration. We had planned to have this registration sometime in March, but that was not possible because as you may be aware we had to replace CI 72: the regulation that governs the registration of voters in the country, and it took a bit of time for the legislation to pass in parliament,” he said.

He added: “And so when the legislation passed we had to do a bit of education. That’s why we scheduled the limited voter registration for April 28 to May 8. Of course, we know that registration is part of the preparation for the election itself and elections are time bound so we couldn’t have rescheduled the registration for any other period. And so that’s why we had scheduled the registration even though we are [not] oblivious to the fact that students were going to write exams”.

The Electoral Commission has, however, stated mechanisms will be rolled out for those left out of the exercise to register through the continuous registration regulation. At the end of the exercise the commission achieved 92.08 percent of its 1.2 million voters estimated to register.