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The governing New Patriotic Party on Monday, August 10, 2020 held a press conference at Alisa Hotel in Accra to share its position and observation on the just ended mass voters registration exercise.

Below is the full text of the speech read by the party’s General Secretary, John Boadu.

10TH AUGUST, 2020

PRESS CONFERENCE ADDRESSED BY THE NPP GENERAL SECRETARY, JOHN BOADU, ON THE PARTY’S POSITION AND OBSERVATION OF THE JUST ENDED MASS VOTER REGISTRATION EXCERCISE

Ladies and gentlemen of the media, good afternoon! Thank you for honouring our invitation to this press conference. We have called you this afternoon in respect of the just ended voter registration exercise.

The exercise has been highly successful and we wish to commend the Electoral Commission, political parties, civil society groups, security services, the media, all stakeholders and the good people of Ghana for their efforts. This press conference shall address the following issues:

- The vindication of the NPP position which we have held since 2012, that the old register was defective

- The EC’s case for a new voter register

- The NDC’s opposition to the new voter register

- NDC’s facilitation of non-Ghanaians to register and vote in our elections

- The allegation by the NDC that the whole registration exercise was a grand scheme to disenfranchise Ghanaians

- Acts of violence perpetrated at various polling stations, encouraged by the NDC

- Registration in border constituencies where the numbers have come down

- More people registered with the NIA card

- NDC’s opposition to the registration of students

1. THE VINDICATION THAT THE OLD VOTER REGISTER WAS BLOATED

Ladies and gentlemen, we, in the NPP, as you will recall, have been consistent in stressing that the old voter register was defective and not fit for purpose. One of the issues we had with the old register was that, it was bloated. Indeed, the numbers from the current register vindicates that position.

Until recently, the EC had always disagreed with us on our position that the register is bloated. Indeed, after we mounted pressure, the EC, under the then Chairperson, Madam Charlotte Osei, empanelled the late Justice VCRAC Crabbe and others, in October 2015 to hear proposals, collect and collate views from the stakeholders, analyze the views and make recommendations to the Commission.

In their report, the Crabbe Panel vindicated NPP’s position that the register was bloated. The panel established that the old register contained several categories of ineligible registrants including multiple registrations, names of minors, names of foreigners and deceased persons.

After its analysis of facts before it, the Crabbe Committee stated in page 10 of their Report, that “there is evidence that the register of voters contains a substantial number of people whose names are currently not valid.

By all indications, the number of registered voters is not only unusually high, but it may be in excess of the potential number.

Based on the 2012 projected population of Ghana, provided by the Ghana Statistical Service, and discounting the population of foreigners, there were about 150,000 more individual records in the Register of voters than the 2012 estimated population of persons aged 18 years and older of Ghanaian nationality.

This would include some thousands of minors who were wrongly registered.” On the issue of dead people in the register, the Committee observed on page 14 that; “further analysis of data, based on the reported number registered in 2012 and 2014, shows that as many as 580,000 estimated number of voter deaths would have occurred cumulatively by the 2016 elections and may well remain in the Register of Voters.

It is not clear how many of these deaths have actually been identified and their records expunged from the Register through the established procedure. This constitutes about 4% of the eligible voters on the register. This margin is almost twice the margin by which most presidential elections were won and more than ten times the margin in the preceding elections”.

As a way of tackling these issues, the Crabbe Committee on page 20 of their report first of all observed that; “it may be difficult to justify more than half a million invalid records in the Register that we seek to characterize as credible. It may be expedient to try to find a middle ground to creating a new register through a completely new registration process.

The electoral commission could consider extending the exhibition exercise to have voters confirm their names on the list, an indication that they would want to maintain their voter status. The benefits include signaling that the EC is doing something about the known flaws in the Register”.

In effect, the point the NPP is making here today is that the fact that the old register is bloated cannot be disputed. Eventually, the E.C itself decided to compile a new register. As we have stated already, the numbers that have come out of the new register confirms the link held position that the old register was bloated.

In its Meet the Citizen briefing on the 6th August 2020, the EC told us that;

"A clean Voters Register is the basic foundation for ensuring that clean, credible, and transparent elections are delivered to the people of Ghana. The 2019 Register had a total of 16,845,420 Voters. Apart from this, we also had 797,493 people quarantined on the Duplicates/Multiples and Exceptions lists. The political parties are aware of this. When this is added to the registered Voters, the overall total is a little over 17.6million.

Had the Commission maintained the old register and conducted a Limited Registration Exercise in all Electoral Areas and Registration Centers across the country, we would have estimated to conservatively add about 2million Ghanaians on to the existing Register. Potentially, without the compilation of a new Voters Register, the Commission was on track to register some 19million people plus another 800,000 people who remain on the multiple and exceptions lists who previously were denied the right to vote.

This would have given us a total number of almost 19.6 million persons, approximately 20 million, had we maintained the old register and conducted the Limited Registration Exercise as compared to the current figure of 16.63 million, some 3 million difference. With the compilation of this register those on the duplicates/exceptions lists from 2012 have had the opportunity to register."

In a country where the outcome of general elections have sometimes been determined by less than 50, 000 votes, 3 million illegal registration entries or votes make a significant impact on the integrity and credibility of elections. Indeed, the VCRAC Crabbe panel, made this point as well.

2. THE EC’S CASE FOR A NEW REGISTER

Even so, the E.C has also argued, that the decision to compile a new register in 2020 was largely driven by technical and financial considerations. The E.C says it received advice from its IT team and external Consultants to the effect that, it would be prudent to acquire a new system rather than refurbish the current system which had become obsolete and thus unfit for purpose.

Indeed, according to a letter from the vendors of the defunct system, the EC, would be at great risk if it did not take steps to change the equipment.

In the letter, the vendors stated in part, that: "We would like to announce that the items in the present BVRs are End- of-Life, including laptops. This means that no components are available to repair the items. And so, for purposes of availability, maintainability and compatibility in the future we recommend to purchase new BVRs."

Equally, the old Biometric Verification Device (BVD) was unable to verify a number of voters electronically resulting in a high number of manual verifications on voting day, which is largely unreliable and a potential source of dispute as it tends to compromise the integrity of the elections. It also does not have facial recognition technology nor does it allow for a facial recognition add-on.

The new Biometric Voter Management Solution which the EC has acquired ahead of the 2020 elections has facial recognition as an additional feature for those whose fingers cannot be verified. This will therefore reduce the high incidence of manual verification which often proves to be problematic and tends to compromise the integrity and credibility of our elections.

3. THE NDC’s OPPOSITION TO THE NEW REGISTER COMPILATION

Despite the fact that the EC had demonstrated enough utility and justification for the adoption of a new Biometric Voter Management Solution to deal with the many challenges with the old system, the NDC, continued to stage strong protests against the commission’s move and were bent on thwarting the EC's efforts.

They began by boycotting IPAC meetings where critical decisions regarding the new voters register were to be taken. Yet, they consistently held press conferences to mislead the public on issues discussed at the very meetings of IPAC they refused to attend.

They also spearheaded the formation of the “Inter-Party Resistance Against the New Voters' Register”, comprising some 6 political parties out of the over 21 registered parties in the country, to constantly torment the EC through conferences and demonstrations.

All the arguments they made against the voter registration including the issue of cost, wrong timing, misplaced priority, possibility of civil war among others were all defeated by superior arguments in support of the exercise.

Indeed, in the face of continued NDC protests, the EC convened its Eminent Persons Panel and met most of the political parties. The report of the meeting was that a majority of political parties wanted a new voter register.

Notwithstanding the emphatic conclusion of the Eminent Persons Panel, the NDC proceeded to the Supreme Court as their last resort to challenge the EC’s decision.

By an unanimous decision of the Supreme Court, the NDC’s position was defeated. Even so, the General Secretary of the NDC addressed the press in the forecourt of the Supreme Court to announce that the Supreme Court had ruled in their favour.

Even after being defeated in the Supreme Court, the NDC continued to threaten fire and brimstone if the E.C went ahead to compile a new voters register with some of them vowing to stop speaking to the media and castrating themselves if the EC was able to compile the new register.

Well, as we have it now, the electoral commission has been able to successfully conduct the new voter registration across the country, and yet the NDC communicators are still talking to the media. They have also not offered themselves for castration.

We wish to also make the point that Covid-19 was never part of the reasons for the NDC’s opposition to the new register, because they started their protest against the new register in 2019 when there was no Covid. And so, it is disingenuous for the NDC to now seek to ground their reason for opposing the new register on Covid.

Indeed, the NDC’s loudest argument in the latter stages was that Ghanaians did not have the Ghana card and so, the EC’s decision to restrict the breeder documents to the Ghana card and passport meant that the Commission intended to disenfranchise Ghanaians.

However, current data from the registration shows clearly that more than 60% of registrants used the Ghana card, 1.9% used passports and 38% used guarantors. At the end of the exercise, nobody has complained of being disenfranchised for want of documentation. Clearly, the NDC’s argument was a deliberate ploy to stop the EC from conducting its constitutionally mandated function and they’ve been exposed by events.

REGISTRATION IN BORDER CONSTITUENCIES WHERE THE NUMBERS HAVE COME DOWN

Ladies and gentlemen, a major security imperative for deploying security personnel to our borders is first and foremost the prevention of terrorism. That is why there is more personnel on the northern border.

Pursuant to the advent of Covid-19, the security duty was enhanced to include the containment measures required against Covid-19. The NDC had full knowledge of these measures and did not complain.

It is the same deployments that coincidentally , had to be in place to prevent not only illegal entries against Covid-19 but also the influx of non-Ghanaians seeking to be part of the voter registration exercise. Consequently, there has been some reduction in the registration figures in border constituencies which the diagram below speak to: