Provide legal basis for exclusion of voters’ ID card – Supreme Court orders EC

The Supreme court has asked the Electoral Commission of Ghana to provide a legal basis of its quest to exclude the current Voters ID card as a card for the compilation of the new voters’ ID card. 

This has sparked some jubilation in some quarters. The supreme at it’s sitting on June 4th in Accra ordered the Electoral Commission to provide the legal basis upon which it is refusing to accept the voters’ ID cards currently existing.

Some political analysts anticipate that the supreme court may stop the EC if the later fails to justify and also stop it from forging ahead with the controversial decision which the NDC, other political parties and the civil society organization including IMANI has spoken against.

The argument put forth against the controversial move is that it will disenfranchise many Ghanaians and qualified voters for that matter who do not have the Ghana card or the Ghana passport. These are the only documents the EC will use plus two qualified and registered voters to verify that someone is a Ghana in case he or she does not have any of the proof of nationality. 

Some have seen this as an indication that the Supreme Court will stop the EC from going ahead with the controversial decision.

The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) dragged the EC to the apex court in a bid stop the Commission from compiling a new voters’ register for the 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections.

The party argued in the March 2020 writ that the EC lacks the power to go ahead with its plans because it can only “compile a register of voters only once, and thereafter revise it periodically, as may be determined by law.”