The Electoral Commission (EC) has stated that its objective of ensuring a credible register is on track.
According to the Commission, “With an estimated population of 31 million, many experts will agree that a voter population between 50 to 55% of the total population for a country in sub-Saharan Africa is acceptable.”
Deputy Chairman of the EC in charge of Corporate Services, Dr. Boss Eric Asare, made this known in an address to the media on Thursday, August 6, 2020, at the Let The Citizen Know press conference held in Accra.
He said “at the current rate, and after the registration is completed and the register is certified taking into consideration the de-duplication process, we may have around 53% of the population in the register.”
He recounted that “the Commission’s main objective of compiling the new Voters Register was to ensure a credible and a clean Voters Register which would stand the test of time.”
So far, he said, the numbers the Commission has been able to register is a testament to its mandate as an Election Management Body (EMB) that seeks to undertake processes that ensure we deliver elections that are free, fair, and meets International standards.
“A clean Voters Register is the basic foundation for ensuring that clean, credible, and transparent elections are delivered to the people of Ghana,” he added.
He noted that “the 2019 Register had a total of 16,845, 420 Voters. Apart from this, we also had 797,493 people quarantined on the Duplicates/Multiples and Exceptions lists.”
“The political parties are aware of this. When this is added to the registered Voters, the overall total is a little over 17.6million.
Had the Commission maintained the old register and conducted a Limited Registration Exercise in all Electoral Areas and Registration Centers across the country, we would have estimated to conservatively add about 2million Ghanaians on to the existing Register.”
He noted that “potentially, without the compilation of a new Voters Register, the Commission was on track to register some 19million people plus another 800,000 people who remain on the multiple and exceptions lists who previously were denied the right to vote.”
“This would have given us a total number of almost 19.6 million persons, approximately 20 million, had we maintained the old register and conducted the Limited Registration Exercise as compared to the current figure of 16.63 million, some 3 million difference.”
“With the compilation of this register those on the duplicates/exceptions lists from 2012 have had the opportunity to register.”
By Melvin Tarlue