Limited Voter's Registration: The Dilemma of Prospective Voters

By: James Nalir

Article 42 of Ghana's 1992 constitution grants every citizen of Ghana of eighteen years of age or older who is of sound mind the right to vote and the right to be registered as a voter for the purposes of public elections and referendums. 

Article 45 (e) of the same constitution requires the Electoral Commission to implement voter registration expansion programs. Furthermore, CI 91 states that the Electoral Commission should implement a Program for Continuous Registration. 

Over the last two years, the Electoral Commission has consistently failed to fulfill its responsibility of conducting Programs for the expansion of voter registration with undisclosed justification, leaving a massive backlog of approximately three million on the commission. 

To fulfill a mandate that it has repeatedly failed to fulfill, the commission has scheduled a limited voter registration drive across the country from September 12 to October 2, 2023.

Now that the commission has had the opportunity to carry out this much-anticipated exercise, expectations and hope from Ghanaians especially the youths are that the commission will make accessibility key to capture the majority of applicants. 

Away from everyone’s imagination, the commission instead of decentralizing the exercise to the 1,500 electoral areas as it did in 2020, the commission rather limited the exercise to its 258 district offices across the country making the distance between communities and registration centres an issue for applicants. Some applicants commute as far as 10 kilometres from their communities to the registration centre. 

Applicants who do not have a Ghana Card and will need guarantors have to bus themselves and their guarantors to the registration centres and in the worst-case scenario that an applicant cannot register on that day, he or she has to go home with the guarantor and come back for the registration. 

Amid the economic hardships, applicants spend an average of Gh₵300 on transportation for themselves and third guarantors.

The distance, cost, risk, and disappointments, according to most registration centres, have discouraged and made eligible Ghanaians lose interest and enthusiasm in participating in the registration process. 

The obvious question that everyone has is why, if the commission truly cares about their plights and respects the principle of democracy, ballot boxes arrive in their communities during voting yet registration cannot take place in these same towns. 

Aside from the distance and its implications, the exercise has subsequently experienced a slew of technical hiccups, forcing Electoral Commission workers to rely on manual registration at some registration centres.

All of these developments have created an opportunity for political parties, particularly prospective applicants in the upcoming 2023 district-level elections and 2024 general elections, to mobilize eligible Ghanaians and bus them from various communities to district capitals for registration and back to their communities. Others go above and beyond to feed them.

Individuals, interest organizations, and political parties have expressed concerns about the restricted voter registration exercise, particularly the distance between communities and registration centres, and have offered recommendations to the Electoral Commission; nonetheless, these efforts have fallen short. 

The commission's posturing led Ghanaians to believe that it was in cahoots with the incumbent government and that the decision to limit the exercise to distract offices was a well-planned and calculated attempt to Favor the incumbent government, given that the party in power had the resources to mobilize eligible Ghanaians to the registration centres.

My recommendations are as follows: 

Firstly, for the sake of time, the Electoral Commission should continue registration in suburban and urban regions while halting the process in rural areas to take measures to decentralize the activity to electoral areas. 

 Secondly, Parliament should invite the Electoral Commissioner to participate further in the restricted registration exercise.

Lastly, logistical assistance for the commission should be provided to ease the exercise.

For God and Country!!!

James Nalir

BA. History, KNUST

Youth Activist