The Electoral Commission (EC) of Ghana is reportedly plotting to compile a new voter register for the 2024 elections.
The Commission is set to present a Constitutional Instrument to Parliament to replace the 2020 Voter Register and to make the Ghana Card the sole reference document and requirement for getting onto this new register.
Minority leader Haruna Iddrisu disclosed this during an interview in Parliament on Tuesday and warned this attempt may threaten the stability of the country as it borders on the right of Ghanaian citizens to vote and to exercise their inalienable right to vote.
According to him, since 1993 voter registration exercises made provision for a guarantor on other persons guaranteeing for persons to get onto voter registers in so far as it is established they are Ghanaians and of sound mind to participate in the electoral process.
The Jean Mensa-led EC, he said, is now attempting to unceremoniously dispense with some of these processes and make the national ID the only required document even though many Ghanaians deserving to have it are still struggling to legitimately have access to the Ghana Card.
“That public good must be made increasingly available to every qualified candidate,” he said.
Hon. Haruna Iddrisu argued currently the National Identification Authority (NIA) has registered 16,654,000 persons, printed 16,341,000 Ghana Cards and issued 13,300,000 as against the voter register of 17 million.
“If you use that instrument of a national ID card against a voter population of 17 million, there is a critical technical departure from the requirement and we may not even have a voter register to rely on for the conduct of the 2024 presidential and parliamentary election because a number of Ghanaians on the voter register far exceeds the number of Ghanaians on the national ID card.”
“And yet the national ID card has other persons including foreigners on it.”
According to him, the EC by law and duty ought to have conducted limited voter registration exercises in 2021 and 2022 but failed to do so.
Illegible Ghanaians who have attained 18 years and above in these two years, he said, have therefore been denied the opportunity to get registered and to exercise the right to vote as Ghanaians.
He argued that in 2020 the EC against all sound and technical advice replaced the 2016 biometric voter register in pursuit of a political agenda and undertook the new voter registration, which it is now planning to discard for yet another new registration but this time with the ‘difficult to acquire’ Ghana Card as the only proof of being Ghanaian.