The Electoral Commission (EC) has indicated that it will no longer use the guarantor system in upcoming voter registration exercises.
Deputy Chairman of the Commission in charge of operations, Samuel Tettey, made this known at the Commission’s “Let the Citizen Know” encounter on Thursday, September 8.
According to Mr Tettey, the guarantor system is fraught with many challenges and could no longer provide a secure voter registration system for the country.
As a result, the only documentation source for registration will be the Ghana Card.
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 450-550 thousand 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,” Mr Tettey said.
He called on the National Identification Authority (NIA) to accelerate the issuing of Ghana Cards to enable prospective voters to register to vote.
“Again, we call on the NIA to accelerate the pace of the printing of the Ghana Card to make it easy for anyone who is interested in registering with us to do so,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Commission has denied assertions that the Ghana Card will be an identity card for the 2024 polls.
“We have also heard discussions to the effect that citizens will vote with the Ghana Card in 2024; this is not true. The card is only a requirement to register as a voter for those who have not previously registered.
“Once you present your Ghana Card and successfully register as a voter, you will be issued a voter identification card which bears the features of the EC; namely, the code of your region, district, electoral area, and polling station.
“We expect all the players in the electoral process, including political parties, to encourage all those who do not have a Ghana Card to visit the offices of the National Identification Authority and register for the Ghana card, after which they can also register with the Electoral Commission to enable them to vote in the 2023 District Assembly Elections and the 2024 General Elections.”