EC registers over 7 million voters onto new voters register in 16 days

Some 7,279,237 prospective voters have been registered by the Electoral Commission 16 days after it started the compilation of the new voters register ahead of the 2020 December 7th polls.

This is based on its provisional data released to the public. Greater Accra region has the highest number of voters registered so far. 

Individuals registered in the Greater Accra Region add up to 1,524,600, Ashanti Region is 1,319,498 so far.

The Savannah Region and North East Region have the lowest number of registered voters with 126,980 and 123,715 respectively on the provisional roll.

READ: Sins of Electoral Commission in a needless re-registration exercise

So far, many of the registered voters used the Ghana Card (63.8) followed by the Guarantor applicants (34.4) and the Ghana passport (1.8%)

The EC has also released data on the number of persons challenged so far. 11,818 persons have been questioned by political representatives at the various registration centres nationwide. This however represents 0.2 percent of the registered persons so far. 

The regions with the highest challenges are the Oti Region and the Ahafo Region. The Electoral Commission started the compilation of the new voters register on June 30th after the Supreme Court ruling on the NDC case filed against the EC’s decision to exclude the birth certificate as a document for identifying applicants. 

The voter registration will end at the tail end of July 2020. The Statistical Service’s projected has projected that 17,109,270 Ghanaians are 18 and above. If the Electoral Commission is looking at that figure, then it has about 10 million more persons to capture in the remaining 24 days of the 40 days voter registration exercise. It is important to add that not all persons captured by the Statistical Service’s are citizens of Ghana.

In a related development, The Electoral Commission will organize a mop-up registration exercise in all Senior High Schools which are not registration centres to ensure SHS students are not disenfranchised.

Source: Electionsinghana.com