Afari-Gyan Advises The EC Not To Use The Ghana Card Alone

According to Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, a former chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC), the decision to use the Ghana Card as the only source document for continuous voter registration may result in millions of eligible voters losing their right to vote.



Speaking exclusively to Graphic Online, he claimed that making the Ghana Card the only form of identification for voter registration went against electoral inclusivity, fairness, and justice because many Ghanaians find it difficult to obtain their cards.

If a person is over 18 but does not have a Ghana Card, they do not lose their citizenship. Therefore, it is irrelevant to ask why the Ghana Card is the only form of identification for determining eligibility to register to vote, Dr Afari-Gyan questioned.

The chairman of the EC with the longest tenure in the history of the nation gave an exclusive interview to Graphic Online in which he discussed a new Constitutional Instrument (C.I.) on voter registration that the EC had submitted to Parliament.

Read the full statement in the Monday, August 8, 2022 edition of the Daily Graphic.

Professor Kenneth Attafuah, the Executive Secretary of the National Identification Authority (NIA), informed the media last month that his had distributed 15.7 million Ghana Cards to Ghanaians out of the 16,969,034 who had registered.

Given that those with Ghana Cards included those under the voting age of 18 and that the Ghana Statistical Service predicted that the number of people 18 and older would reach 19.5 million in 2023, Dr Afari-Gyan, who served for 22 years between 1993 and 2015, believed that there was a high risk that many people would lose their right to vote as a result of using the Ghana Card as the only source document for voter registration.

He counselled the EC to carefully consider its insistence on the Ghana Card because, despite playing a crucial role in elections, the electorate, not the EC, decided which candidates would win.

“The electorate decides who becomes king. Therefore, one of the fundamental duties of any electoral commission is to make it easier for people to exercise their right to register to vote and not to impede that right by requiring them to provide documentation that is difficult for them to obtain, the official continued.

The EC presented a draft C to Parliament last month. It is anticipated that my title, Public Elections (Registration of Voters) Regulations, 2021, will govern ongoing voter registration.

The EC is attempting to make the Ghana Card the only form of identification required for eligible voters who wish to be added to the electoral roll, per the new C.I., which would become law after 21 days of the legislative session.

The Parliament’s Subsidiary Legislation Committee has been tasked with handling the C.I. By custom, a minority group member serves as the committee’s chair.

Before becoming effective, orders, rules, or regulations made in accordance with the terms of a law passed by the legislature or a provision of the constitution must be laid before the legislature for 21 sitting days.

Any such subsidiary legislations laid are referred to the committee for review to see if they are in line with the overall goals of the constitution or the Act they are made in accordance with.

It also determines, among other things, whether the legislation involves spending from the Consolidated Fund, directly or indirectly bars court jurisdiction, gives retroactive effect to any provision that the Constitution or the terms of an existing Act, contains any matters that the committee believes should be covered by an Act of Parliament, or has a form or structure that requires further clarification.

Concerns

The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) charged the EC with planning to create a new voter register for the 2024 general election, using the Ghana Card as the only source document, even before the EC had presented the new C.I to Parliament.

Haruna Iddrisu, the leader of the opposition in the House of Representatives, claimed that any attempt by the EC to create a new voter register using only the Ghana Card as a form of identification would not be good for the nation, especially given the fact that the EC had already spent enormous sums of money to create a new register that was used for the 2020 general election.

The EC refuted the NDC’s claim, stating that the new C.I. was only intended to govern continuous registration with Ghana

“We aren’t creating a fresh voter list. We are not dispensing it because the register we created in 2020 is credible and excellent, the EC’s Director of Electoral Services, Dr. Serebour Quaicoe, told the media.

The Minority requested that the EC come and explain why the Ghana Card was used as the only source document while the new C.I. that the EC had laid in Parliament had sparked contentious debates.

First Deputy Minority Chief Whip Ibrahim Ahmed stated at the July 21 session of Parliament that the EC needed to brief the House on the new C.I. in order to clear up any “controversial issue of mistrust.”

Registration centres

Dr Afari-Gyan also expressed worry about the new C. For the voter registration drive, I bothered the registration centres and supervisors.

The district registration supervisor and the registration centre supervisor will report to the regional officer as per the new C.I., and the E.C. plans to carry out the exercise from its district offices.

According to Dr Afari-Gyan, the proposed arrangement would result in fewer registration centres than there would be polling places, which he believes could present issues with regard to the polling places that would be assigned to the registered voters and how the voters would be made aware of their designated polling places.

On election day, he suggested, “one way to get around this issue is to use a voters register that is not polling station specific.”

The political scientist and former lecturer argued that since “the district officers were closer to the registration procedure in their various districts,” the registration reports for supervisors should also be sent to the district office of the EC for accountability reasons.

Two registers

The previous EC chief, who took over for Justice Josiah Ofori Boateng as chair of the Interim Electoral Commission that oversaw the 1992 general election, also criticized the new C.I. for suggesting two new voter registration categories, the electoral area register and constituency register.

Dr Afari-Gyan argued that because the Biometric Verification Devices (BVDs) at the various polling places were not connected, such a move could lead to multiple voting and ballot stuffing.

He continued, “My concern about any of the two registers being used at the polling place on Election Day is that it opens the door more widely to two kinds of voting infractions, namely multiple voting and ballot stuffing, until such time that the BVDs are configured to be interactive in this way.

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