Limited Voter registration exercise: Double registrants won’t be able to vote on Dec 7 – EC warns

The Electoral Commission (EC) has made emphasis about how strong its system is and that those who register twice for a voters ID will not be allowed to cast a ballot on December 7, 2024.

Therefore, the Commission is urging the public to refrain from registering again during the current registration period, particularly those who participated in the limited voter registration exercises in 2023 and 2020 mass registration or who may have relocated.

The Electoral Commission stated that even though its offline registration method was unable to immediately identify duplicate registration, its technology would eventually identify those who had registered twice, disqualifying them from voting.

Recall that the commission ordered all of its district offices to move to an offline registration process in a statement on Wednesday, May 8, in order to accommodate the large number of applicants who flocked to the registration centers.

The Deputy Commissioner, Dr. Eric Bossman Asare, emphasized during a Monday press conference in Accra that the commission preferred online registration over offline registration since it avoids instant double registration.

He explained that “with the offline registration because the data is transferred after the registration, you can have instances where registered voters go to the registration centres to register again.”

Furthermore, he said that it would be hard to immediately identify voters who had lost their voter cards or relocated, as they frequently register again.

“In these instances, our system will later identify their registration as double. Thus, making them ineligible to vote in the elections,” he said, adding, “Such persons will not be able to vote in the 2024 general election.”

The commission added that it had fixed the technological issues that hampered the exercise throughout the first three days. EC hopes to register 623,000 new voters.

Meanwhile, in advance of the national elections on December 7, the EC is working to add 623,000 new voters to the electoral record through an ongoing limited voter registration exercise across the nation.

On Tuesday, May 7, the 21-day exercise got underway in all 258 of the Commission’s district offices. The anticipated conclusion of the exercise is Monday, May 27, 2024.

In addition, the Commission has established 785 extra centers to serve those who might have trouble getting to the EC’s district offices.

Additionally, 25 public universities have been added as locations for registration.

“Permanent centres will be set up at the District offices while mobile teams would be used to register eligible applicants in the difficult-to-access Electoral Areas. The list of registration centres will be provided to the Political Parties no later than twenty-one (21) days to the Registration exercise,” the EC noted.

As the 2024 election approaches, Jean Mensa, the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), has emphasized the significance of creating a reliable voter registration.

Elections cannot be transparent, she claimed, if there is no reliable voter registration.