A communiqué at the end of the Institute of Economic Affairs’ (IEA) organised debate on whether or not to replace the voters’ register has asked the Electoral Commission (EC) to show proactiveness and leadership by engaging the services of a competent, credible and external organization to audit the electoral roll.
The communiqué which was signed by IEA Executive Director Jean Mensa pointed out that “though Article 46 of the National Constitution protects the EC from direction or control, it is nevertheless accountable to the citizens because it is a public organization which draws its funds from the Consolidated Fund.”
It was also agreed according to the communiqué that “there are irregularities with the current Voters’ Register. All stakeholders must work towards a consensus position on addressing these irregularities. The two main schools of thought on how to resolve the problem of illegal entries in the Register are not mutually exclusive.”
Purging the register will ultimately result in a new register, while compiling a new register will rely on some existing data from the old register, the communiqué explained and added that “what is critical is that the final output of this exercise must be a Voters Register with an acceptable margin of error.”
It was agreed that there was the absence of a single codified body on laws dealing with electoral offences in Ghana with the incidence of electoral fraud rife. Ghana should, it was recommended, “emulate the example of Kenya by codifying a set of electoral laws which adequately deter electoral fraud” to ensure that elections are conducted without repeated incidents of illegal registration, ballot box snatching and other drawbacks.
The cost implications of auditing the existing voters’ register of compiling a new register the communiqué stated, “should not take away from steps to provide a credible and acceptable Register for the 2016 elections”. The cost of managing a national crisis resulting from a flawed electoral process will be potentially higher than that of having an acceptable Register, the communiqué added.
It went to stress that Ghana should renew its efforts towards an authentic national identification system for all citizens because going forward, this will feed into the process of providing a robust and credible Voters’ Register.
Two presentations were made during the debate with Prof Mike Oquaye former Deputy Speaker of Parliament demanding a new voters’ register. Dr. Ransford Gyampo, Senior Lecturer, Political Science Department, University of Ghana asking for the purging of the register.
Issues raised included the bloating of the voters’ register and inputting of illegal entries into it.
The need for empirical evidence to prove allegations of bloating came up including the capacity and credibility of the EC to undertake effective audit of the register.
Also coming was the empirical soundness or reliability for the source data for a new register and how the register can be audited among others.
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