Voter Registration: 37,762 Persons Challenged

The just-ended voter registration exercise had over 35,000 applicants eligibility challenged in the process.

The Oti Region topped the chart, followed by the Ahafo and Volta regions.

These provisional figures were announced today [Wednesday, August 12, 2020] by the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), Jean Mensa, pending processes of deduplication and adjudication.

The challenge system

According to the Electoral Commission, “One of the mechanisms set out in law for cleaning the register and ridding it of ineligible persons is the challenge system. The challenge system contributes to ensuring and guaranteeing the credibility of the register. It enables a qualified registered voter to challenge the registration of an applicant on the grounds that the applicant does not satisfy the laid down requirement, namely, that the applicant is not a Ghanaian or that he or she is not 18 years of age, or that he or she is not of sound mind.”

Giving statistics on the number of challenged applicants, Mrs. Mensa said, “At the end of the exercise, the number of challenged cases amounted to 37,762 cases. This represents 0.20% of the total register. From the data, one can observe that the Oti Region had the highest number of challenged cases per population with 0.51% of the registrations being challenged. This is followed by the Ahafo Region where 0.38% of registrations were challenged and then the Volta Region with 0.37% being challenged.”

She further indicated that the challenged cases might be linked to the incidence of non-Ghanaians illegally registering for the voter ID card as most of these happened in border towns in the country.

“It is evident that most of the challenged cases were from border regions with the exception of Ahafo and it gives reason to assume that the challenged cases relate to citizenship issues emanating from the infiltration of foreigners.”

The voter registration exercise, which officially ended on August 6, 2020, did so with 16,963,306 persons registered to vote.

The Greater Accra Region had the most registered voters with 3,509,805 persons.

The Ashanti Region followed with, 3,013,856 persons, Eastern Region with 1,628,108 persons and the Central Region with 1,566,061 persons.

These figures, however, are expected to decrease after deduplication and adjudication.

---citinewsroom