The final voters’ register to be used for the conduct of Ghana’s presidential and parliamentary elections on December 7 this year will be released on Friday, September 30.
Officials of the Electoral Commission who disclosed this exclusively to TV3 Monday said copies of the register will subsequently be issued to the various political parties contesting the elections.
The yet-to-be released electoral roll is a culmination of processes, including the limited registration, deletion of ineligible voters and continuous voter’s registration exercise which were all done this year.
Deputy Director of Communications at the EC, Yusif Alhassan Ayuba, told TV3 “before we can come up with a final register, we need to do proxy so that we know exactly where people are going to vote.
“Then we do transfers because people will be moving from one constituency to the other, from one polling station of their previous registration to a new polling station. So after this, then we will come up with the final register ,” he said.
The Director of Communications at the EC, Eric Kofi Dzakpasu on his part said those who registered during the continuous voters registration which by August 26 will have their names on the new register “We have those who are suspected cases of multiple registration and we also have the exclusion or the exception list, which is the list of persons who were challenged during the registration period and their challenges were upheld by the various registration review committees in addition to people who did illegal registration. All these persons will be excluded from the main register,” he said.
Statistics from the EC shows the current voters register has a voting population of 14,031,793.
Background
The register, which was used for the conduct of the 2012 general elections sparked protest from some political parties and other stakeholders who demanded for a new register claiming the current one was fraught with foreign names among others.
The New Patriotic Party which spearheaded the demand claimed the register was incurably flawed and could not be relied on for the 2016 Elections.
The party’s running mate, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia in 2015 presented what the party said evidence to back its claim that there were 76,000 names of Togolese who are on Ghana’s voters register.
But the EC shot down their demand for a new register after a Committee constituted to look into the issues found no basis for the register to be changed.
A clean up of the 2012 register was however suggested.
NHIS card holders in the register
However, on May 5 this year, the Supreme Court in a case filed by Abu Ramadan and Evans Nimako ordered the EC to remove from Ghana’s current voter’s register, the names of over 56,000 people who used NHIS cards as proof to register and voted in the 2012 elections.
It further ordered the EC to give such persons the opportunity to re-register in order to vote in the 2016 general elections.
The court had earlier in 2014 declared as invalid, the use of the NHIS card as for voter registration on the basis that some foreigners in the country hold such cards.
They were given July 18 and ended Thursday 27 July to re-register.
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