Ghana’s Electoral Commission (EC) has affirmed its decision to compile a new voters register for the 7 November 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections.
According to reports on Thursday, 2 January 2020, the Deputy Chairman of the EC in charge of Operations, Samuel Tettey, announced the decision of the EC at a press conference in Accra on Tuesday, 31 December 2019. Tettey indicated that the current voters register was over bloated and that there had not been an effective means of cleaning it.
Tettey noted that as a result of over bloating, the EC has to use manual verification where voters’ fingerprints cannot be verified. The report said an amount of US 70.96 million dollars would be required to do the compilation exercise which would begin in April this year.
Tettey said part of the money would be used to purchase new biometric voter management systems (BVMS) and biometric voter register kits, as well as upgrading the biometric verification device (BVD) to ensure an improved system.
Meanwhile, the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) is in support of the compilation of a new voters register, arguing that the current register is over bloated. The largest opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) on the other hand, says there is no need for compilation of a new register as the current register has stood the test of time, indicating that the same register was used for the by-elections and recent District Assembly Election.
– APA
