The Deputy Commissioner in charge of Corporate Services at the Electoral Commission is positive that his outfit would be able to register almost one million Ghanaians in their continuous registration exercise before the 2024 elections.
Dr Bossman Asare who spoke on Accra-based TV morning show aired on Wednesday, August 10, 2022, revealed that based on the commission’s estimates, between 450,000 and 500,000 youths in the country turn 18 yearly.
Thus, between the half period of the year 2020 when the EC undertook the registration exercise and the upcoming 2024 elections, there would be about 900,000 persons who would have attained at least the age of 18 and be qualified to register as voters.
This number is exclusive of the number of people who were 18 years and above but were not able to undergo the process in the previous exercise (2020 voter registration exercise) for various reasons.
Meanwhile, the Commission had indicated that the continuous registration exercise would require the use of the Ghana Card to successfully include unregistered persons in their database.
The requirement, therefore, seems to undermine the process since not all have access to the national identification card and its acquisition has been a challenge.
But explaining to the host of the show, Kwamina Sam Biney, Dr Bossman Asare said since the registration process would be a continuous exercise, anytime an unregistered person receives his or her Ghana card, they can head to the EC offices in their respective constituencies to undergo the registration.
“We [EC] have discussed [with the National Identification Authority] and we are confident that we can get the crop of people we hope to register.
“For example in 2020 when we were about to register in March we did a pilot study and [the NIA] had registered seven million people and in 2022 (a little over two years), they have added 10 million to it. So we are confident…
“NIA now operates in 276 districts plus 16 regional offices…So we are not saying it based on our feelings. It is very scientific. We are dealing with numbers and numbers don’t lie,” the Deputy Commissioner said.
His comments came on the back of the Electoral Commission’s engagement with Parliament with hopes of amending the Constitutional Instrument regulating the registration exercise, to allow EC to conduct the continuous registration exercise with the Ghana card.
That said, persons who have already been registered during the 2020 voter registration exercise would not be affected. This was confirmed by the Director of the Electoral Services Department at the EC, Dr Serebour Quaicoe.
“We already compiled a register in 2020, we only want to roll out continuous registration. It is only for those who are going for the continuous registration that we are demanding for the Ghana card,” he said in an interview with Citi News.
