EC considers extending voter registration

The Electoral Commission (EC) is considering the option of extending the period for the ongoing limited voter registration exercise.

The exercise, which began last week Thursday, April 28, and expected to end on Sunday, May 8, 2016, is intended to register persons who have turned 18 years and above that do not have their names in the existing voter register.

It has however, recorded a number of incidents, including malfunctioning of registration machines and in some cases, inability of potential voters to register their names due to limited devices.

It has been happening especially at the various tertiary institutions across the country, thereby raising serious concerns about deliberate or possible disenfranchisement of lots of Ghanaian students who have attained the voting age of 18 years.

Decision

But at a press conference in Accra yesterday, Deputy Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), Georgina Opoku Amankwa said, “After the exercise we will look at it holistically and see whether it merits an extension.” It was in response to the question as to whether the Commission was considering extending the registration period in the face of the hitches recorded.

She added, “As I sit we haven’t taken any such decision” and that they would consider that option after evaluating the outcome of the exercise after Sunday.

Though she admitted the fact that there had been some challenges and hitches, the Deputy EC boss said it was “so far so good.”

Talking of places like the Legon campus of the University of Ghana (UG) with a student population of well over 40,000 where long-winding queues had been forming but with only one registration centre, she indicated, “We are dealing with all those issues.”

Measures

As part of the measures, Ms Opoku Amankwa indicated that the EC sent another team to the Legon campus yesterday to complement the efforts of officials at the only registration centre there; and was likely to send another there today to ease the pressure.

The EC official said the Commission was expecting a maximum of 1.2 million people to be registered.

Supreme Court Ruling

On the latest Supreme Court ruling which asked the EC to clean the existing voter register of some 600,000 dead persons, those who registered with the National Health Insurance identity cards and minors, she pointed out that “The EC is yet to get a copy of the judgment, study it and then see what is actually in there.”

She therefore pleaded with journalists to defer their questions on the issue to a later day for the EC to apprise itself of the content of the ruling.

“The good thing is that what the Supreme Court is asking the EC to do is something that already we have put in place……. and doing so I would ask that the nitty gritties are yet to be found out in the judgment itself which we are yet to be furnished with and so we wouldn’t want to take any question on that,” she pleaded.

Mrs Opoku Amankwa however, indicated that they would use the exhibition of the voter register – which is expected to start at the end of June – to clean it.

Present were members of the East African Community (EAC) of electoral management bodies drawn from Kenya, Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda.

They were in the country for an exchange programme (to learn from the experiences of Ghana) particularly explore the structural and institutional arrangements of Ghana’s Electoral Commission.

It was also to enable them to identify best practices that would inform policy organs in the East African community and to strengthen cooperation among Electoral Commissions in the EAC partner states and further enhance electoral management body’s skills and knowledge in democratization whiles identifying programmes and initiatives for benchmarking to enhance democratic governance in the region.