Opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) says the compilation of the new voters’ register has exposed the fallacy of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the Jean Mensa led Electoral Commission (EC) that Ghana’s voters’ roll is bloated.
The just ended voters registration exercise according to the party has brought untold shame, a disappointment to the NPP and demolished the propaganda including the long-held conspiracy theory of Akufo-Addo, Bawumia and the NPP which was echoed by the EC that Ghana’s voters’ register is bloated by the inclusion of foreigners, particularly Togolese.
Provisional figures from the EC after the registration exercise indicated that 16,963,306 persons had registered in the just ended exercise while 16,845,420 persons registered formerly.
Quoting from the Crabbe committee report, the Director of Elections of the NDC, Elvis Afriyie-Ankrah, said, the report stated that about 580,000 persons cumulatively between 2012 and 2016 would have died but their names would have remained on the registration documents, thereby bloating it.
He said “if we are to use the same projections, then between 2016 and 2020 another 580,000 would have died within the 4-years period as happened between 2012 and 2016.
In effect therefore about 1, 160,000 people who would have died will still have their names on the old registration documents. In other words, the people who are alive on the old register would be about 15,685,420.”
At a news conference in Accra, Afriyie-Ankrah stated that the NDC’s argument had always been that in a biometric voter register regime, dead people don’t vote and no impersonation can take place since voters had to be verified before they can vote.
This, he said, means that in reality the living people on the old register would have been left with about 15,685,420.
If the EC according to him had carried out a limited voter registration exercise as the NDC and other civil society organizations had advocated, an addition of about 800,000 people would have been registered to bring the final figure to 16,485,420.
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The above-mentioned figure according to the Director of Elections of the NDC compares favorably with the final figure of 16,963,306.
He added that as a result of the closure of Ghana’s borders, the fear of contracting COVID-19, and the unprecedented state-sponsored violence and voter suppression, some people did not go through the registration.
Afriyie-Ankrah said the above analysis show clearly that the old register was after all not bloated and the EC has ended up at square one.
“What the EC has succeeded in doing to Ghanaians is to inflict pain on us, subject and open Ghanaians to the dangers of COVID-19, and finally waste our scarce resources on a needless venture of compiling a new register at the cost of about $150 million. We pray that this would bring an end to the NPP’s delusion that our register is bloated,” he stated.
Source: Adovor Nutifafa
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