No more guarantor system for voter registration – EC

The Electoral Commission (EC) has announced sweeping reforms to voter registration and voting, two years before the next general elections.

These will affect source documents for voter registration and the voter ID system, and will take effect with the maturation of a yet-to-be laid constitutional instrument.

Deputy Commission Chair, Samuel Tettey, told Journalists at the Commission’s “Let the Citizen Know” encounter.

Deputy Chairman of the Commission in charge of operations, Samuel Tettey says the guarantor system is fraught with many challenges and could no longer provide a secure system of voter registration for the country.

On registration of voters, the Commission says it will not be compiling a new voter’s register. It is however running a continuous registration, hoping to capture between 450,000-550,000 potential registrants annually.

“We are not going to compile a new voters register. Rather, we would continuously register voters to update the current voters register to ensure that anyone who wants to register as a voter has the opportunity to do so”.

“This registration exercise unlike the previous registration exercise will be continuous. As such, anyone who has the card can just walk to our offices and register. It is not a periodic or limited registration exercise that could disenfranchise persons who do not have the Ghana Card at the time of the limited exercise. This is an all-year-round process. As such, a person who doesn’t have the Ghana Card today can acquire it tomorrow and simply walk into a district office where he or she intends to vote and register.”