The Minority Leader in Parliament, Haruna Iddrisu says a National Democratic Congress government will make it possible for all Ghanaians who turn 18 to get onto the electoral roll instantly.
According to him, this will be done in the first 100 days of a prospective NDC government in 2021.
This, he says will be done by opening up the offices of the Electoral Commission (EC) to allow for citizens to have access to register.
He made this known in an interview in Parliament after the House passed the Public Elections Amendment Regulations (C.I 126) on Tuesday, June 9, 2020.
“Within 100 days of President Mahama being declared the winner of the 2020 election, we will make it natural for any Ghanaian attaining 18 years to walk freely to any office of the [Electoral] Commission to be registered as a citizen of Ghana,” Mr. Iddrisu said.
The EC normally has a fixed window to allow citizens to register to vote.
Ahead of the 2020 polls, it has set Tuesday, June 30, 2020, to begin its latest leg of voter registrations.
The run-up to elections in Ghana is normally accompanied by controversy over the integrity of the electoral roll.
Then an opposition party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) called for the compilation of a new voters’ register in 2015 describing the existing one as lacking credibility.
Current Vice President Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia notably alleged that there were more than 76,000 Togolese nationals registered in Ghana to vote.
The questionable credibility of the current electoral roll is one of the reasons the Commission has changed the law to limit the valid identification for registration to the Ghana Card and the Ghana passport.
The EC is currently in court with the NDC over the matter and has described the old voter ID as “a fruit from a poisoned tree” and a breach of Article 42 of the Constitution.
It also cited the court’s judgement in the Abu Ramadan case, where it indicated that the use of the National Health Insurance Card to register a voter is inconsistent with Article 42 of the constitution and therefore void.
As part of the fallout from the Abu Ramadan case, over 56,000 names registered with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) cards were deleted from the register in line with a Supreme Court order, because the NHIS card is available to non-citizens.