Peace Council backs EC’s move to use Ghana Card for voter registration

The National Peace Council has backed the Electoral Commission’s move to use the Ghana Card as the exclusive document for voter registration for future elections.

The EC had earlier proposed to use the card as the sole requirement for registration, but it faced backlash from key stakeholders due to challenges in the issuance of Ghana Cards by the National Identification Authority (NIA).

However, after a closed-door meeting with the EC to deliberate on matters related to the upcoming elections, the Chairman of the National Peace Council Dr. Ernest Adu Gyamfi emphasised that the guarantor system exposes many shortfalls in the electoral process, thus underscoring the need to use the Ghana Card.

“The reality is that until we accept Ghana card or one system as our form of registration, the figures they gave us 63 per cent of those who registered within this short period used the guarantor system, which is high. Ghana cards are 39 per cent so that the whole system of busing people will continue.”

“You bring people from a different constituency, if I think that this is my safe zone and I have enough votes when they move people from the constituency, then you go and say,’ Where’s your card, where do you live?’, somebody comes in and say I know him. How can you challenge those things?”

In a related development, the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission Jean Mensah reiterated the commission’s commitment to ensure that all inmates who have turned 18 in various prisons will be registered as part of its mop-up exercise scheduled from August 1 to August 3, 2024.

“The registration for our citizens in the prison facilities in the country will take place from the 1st to the 3rd of August. The Commission intends to have a mop-up exercise in all the 268 district offices including the newly created Guan constituencies.”

“As part of the mopping exercise we intend to register citizens who are eligible in all prisons across the country and we will work extensively with the Ghana Prisons Service on the number of inmates who qualified for registration.”