The Electoral Commission (EC) has announced that it will no longer use the guarantor system in upcoming voter registration exercises.
As a result, the only source of document for the registration will be the Ghana Card.
This will take effect with the maturation of a yet-to-be laid constitutional instrument.
Deputy Chairman of the Commission in charge of operations, Samuel Tettey, told Journalists at the Commission’s “Let the Citizen Know” encounter on Thursday, September 8.
Mr. Tettey said the guarantor system is fraught with many challenges and could no longer provide a secure system of voter registration for the country.
“On registration of voters, the Commission says it will not be compiling a new voter’s register. It is however running a continuous registration hoping to capture between 450-550 thousand potential registrants annually.
“Rather, we would continuously register voters to update the current voters register to ensure that anyone who wants to register as a voter has the opportunity to do so.
“This registration exercise unlike the previous registration exercise will be continuous. As such, anyone who has the card can just walk to our offices and register. It is not a periodic or limited registration exercise that could disenfranchise persons who do not have a Ghana Card at the time of the limited exercise. This is an all-year-round process.
As such a person who doesn’t have the Ghana Card today can acquire it tomorrow and simply walk into a district office where he or she intends to vote and register,” he said.
Meanwhile, he denied assertions that the Ghana Card will be an identity card for the 2024 polls.
“We have also heard discussions to the effect that citizens will vote with the Ghana Card in 2024; this is not true. The card is only a requirement to register as a voter for those who have not previously registered.
Once you present your Ghana Card and successfully register as a voter, you will be issued a voter identification card which bears the features of the EC; namely, the code of your region, district, electoral area, and polling station.”
