Electoral Commission begins limited voter registration exercise today

Today, Tuesday, May 7, marks the start of the limited voter registration exercise for new registrants and those seeking voter cards by the Electoral Commission. However, May 27, 2024, would mark the end of the 21-day exercise.

The goal of the exercise, according to EC Chairwoman Madam Jean Mensa, is to register about 623,000 first-time voters nationwide.

“The registration will be from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. And that gives us the figure of 623,000 that we have put there. That is not to say that we cannot go beyond that. We did mention that in 2023, we projected 700,000 people to visit our registration centres.”

In addition, Jean Mensa stated that the commission had made arrangements for all district offices to rent generators, which would kick in in the event of a power loss and guarantee ongoing voter registration services.

She clarified that in the event that the generators fail, the offices will go into “offline” mode, registering voters by hand and storing their information on a pen drive.

“We are trying hard to, we’ve made arrangements to ensure that we don’t have challenges because of dumsor. What we’ve done is to have all our district offices rent generators so that in the event where there’s dumsor, that can kick in,” the EC said.

“However, should there be the unexpected, we would switch on to the offline and by offline it means the voters will be registered and their details will be put on a pen drive that will be copied in our offices when the light returns, so the registration will not be disrupted,” she added.

Ghana is set to go to the polls on December 7,2024 to elect a new president and various Parliamentarians for various constituencies. The election would see many political parties and independent candidates contesting such as NPP, NDC, Movement for Change, CPP, PNC, among many others.