Limited date for registration should be postponed - Danquah Institute

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Addressing the press on Monday, 1 February, 2016, in Accra, the Executive Director, Nana Atoborah Quaicoo said, "the Danquah Institute calls on the Electoral Commission to heed to the proposal from its own panel of experts and implement the option of validation as a credible and viable means of giving Ghanaians a register that can be seen by all as credible for an election that we simply cannot afford for it not to be seen as credible."

"The Danquah Institute by this news conference is asking the EC to postpone the date for the limited registration for another month or six weeks to consider the proposal of the panel and work towards incorporating validation with the limited exercise."

He said "Failure to heed to this wise counsel would risk taking Ghana into this year’s crucial polls with serious doubts on the credibility of the base document."

Mr Atoborah added that "validation is a viable option for cleaning up the register of people who have since migrated from Ghana. It is important to remember that the law states that before one can register to vote in both presidential and parliamentary elections in Ghana one must not only be eligible"

Read the full report: Limited date for registration should be postponed - Danquah Institute

"Based on the reported number of registered voters in 2014 which shows that as many as 584,892 estimated number of voter death could have occurred cumulatively by the year 2016, and may well remain in the register of voters. This constitutes about 4% of eligible voters on the register. On the one hand, the margin is almost twice the margin by which presidential elections were won and more than 10 times the margin in the precedent elections.