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Immediate past Chairman of Ghana’s Electoral Commission, Kwadwo Afrai-Gyan, as a lead witness for the electoral body during the 2012 Presidential Election Petition trial, admitted to several instances of multiple registrations in the register of voters used for the 2012 general elections.

After making those admissions, the same Dr Afari-Gyan later took what was described as “a potentially dangerous and indefensibly stubborn position” by insisting that the EC would not bow to pressure from political parties and civil society groups to commission an independent audit of the biometric voters’ register.

Apparently taking inspiration from Dr Afari-Gyan’s position, the governing National Democratic Congress has given the clearest indication that it will oppose any attempt to clean-up the bloated voters’ register.

While the other parties in the country, together with civil society groups, have been insisting that using the same register cannot guarantee free and fair elections in 2016, the NDC says it has “faith” in the electoral register with multiple registrations.

The National Executive Committee of the party, therefore, says it is opposed to the calls for a clean-up of the voters’ register, describing the calls as “diversionary tactics”.

“So far as we are concerned, there is nothing wrong with the current register, and we believe the call for a clean-up is calculated to create confusion”, Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, a National Vice-Chairman of the NDC, insists.

Addressing a capacity-building workshop for the youth of the party in Kumasi, Mr Ofosu Ampofo said the party did not understand why the opposition parties, especially the NPP, should call for a new register because the current register was done with their active participation.

“We have faith in the register and, therefore, see agitations to change it as misplaced”, he added.

Five of the main opposition parties in the country, the New Patriotic Party, the Convention People’s Party, the People’s National Convention, the Progressive People’s Party and the National Democratic Party have all raised various degrees of credibility issues with the current register, which was first compiled in 2012.

Analysis the New Statesman has seen show that in more than 90 constituencies, more people were captured in the voters’ register than, per the census figures, would have been eligible to register. Also, in many places, the voter population increased by 50% between the last two elections, something electoral experts see as extremely abnormal.

In places like Tamale Central, Tamale North, Ketu South, Nkwanta North, Kpone Katamanso, the growth in voter population between 2008 and 2012 was well over 50%. The estimated annual growth rate of Ghana’s total population is 2.5%.

In North Tongu, for example, 74,094 people were registered to vote in 2008. By, 2012, that number had shot up by 52,966 more to 127,061, a 71.5% rise. It is difficult to explain what could have accounted for such an astronomical increase, which can also be seen in several other places.

The expectation of the opposition parties is that the new EC Chair, unlike her predecessor, will accept what appears to be overwhelming evidence that Ghana’s electoral roll is bloated and, therefore, a new register must be compiled in time for the 2016 general elections, which is likely to take place in November rather than December of that year.

The NPP has officially written to the EC boss, explaining its position on the need for a new voters register to be compiled.

But, observers are keenly waiting for her response to the growing calls for a new register to be compiled. This they say will give a clear indication to the country whether or not she can be relied on to be impartial, professional and patriotic with her work.

The use of biometrics was meant to take care of multiple registration and impersonation, hence. However, strangely, it ended up being the highest register in Ghana’s history, both in numbers and as a percentage of the total population.

To date, the EC has provided no independently verifiable evidence that either the Commission or its contractor, STL, undertook a credible de-duplication of the 2012 register.

For last year’s limited registration, the EC came out to say that the de-duplication exercise identified more than 72,000 double entries, representing some 10% of the numbers registered during the exercise.

The little evidence which came out in the course of the 2013 election petition trial suggested that STL’s AFIS (automated fingerprint identification system) could not have operated to clean up the register, at least equitably across all regions.

Yet, the EC has, hitherto, rejected all calls from civil society, especially, for an open, international tender for a credible NIST-certified AFIS company to forensically audit Ghana’s register and in the presence of technical agents of all political parties.

Now, the opposition parties are saying they cannot even trust that an audit would yield the needed results. Martin Adjei-Mensah Korsah, Director for Electoral Affairs, NPP, insists the main opposition party wants “nothing short of an entirely new register.”

“We can’t be talking about a new audit without understanding the details of that audit. In any event, the register is fundamentally flawed. There are too many foreigners on the list. In court, during the Abu Ramadan case, it was admitted by the Attorney-General that millions of Ghanaians registered by using their National Health Insurance Card. The Supreme Court has ruled that to be unconstitutional. The EC should not try to tinker with any cleaning up exercise of the existing, bloated register. They should just do the right thing and give us a new register and that decision must be taken early for us to prepare well,” Mr Adjei-Mensah Korsah told the New Statesman in recent interview.

In an interview with Daily Graphic recently, the leader of the CPP, Samia Nkrumah, was emphatic: “We cannot go into the 2016 election with the old register.”

Ghana’s voter register has ranged from 46.30% of the population in 1992 to 54.50% in 2008, before shooting up to 55.60% in 2012.

The 2004 register, arguably the cleanest of them all, was, at 49.5% of the population, smaller in both numbers (10,354,970) and percentages than the 2000 voters register, which had 10,700,252 names, representing 55.5% of the population then. This means that the EC, during the Kufuor era, was rather more pro-active in ensuring a credible register.

The NPP says it will not compromise on the push for a new register to be compiled before the 2016 contest.

The party is calling for the new register to be compiled to be independently audited by an internationally reputable firm before the 2016 election.

Also, the NPP wants copies of the new voters’ register to be provided to political parties in both electronic (csv file) and (pdf file) formats for their own analysis to be done.

They want the EC to introduce a new voter ID that contains a chip with the biometric data of the voter implanted.

They want the new register to be sorted alphabetically by last name, gender and address of the registrant.