IMANI Africa has pointed out that the basis of “malicious bloating” on which the Electoral Commission rode on to conduct a full voter registration exercise is fallacious and could have been prevented if the Birth and Deaths Registry was well tooled.
According to a document released by the economic and social policy think tank, the creation of a new voters roll by the EC was a waste of “scarce” public resources.
IMANI further indicated that if a small part of the amount given to the EC to create a new register was given to the Registry, the issue of deliberate bloating, which has not been resolved by the creation of a new register, would have been solved.
“In 2018, the Registry’s allocated budget was $1 million in today’s money, of which a mere 67% was released. If even a fraction of the $150 million given to the EC for this needless task had been instead passed on to the Registry to enable automatic electronic notifications of birthdates and deaths, something that would have cost less than $1.5 million, the $150 million wasted on this exercise would have been saved.”
According to IMANI, a limited voter registration exercise, which would have cost less, would also been more effective than the just ended exercise.
“It is clear that had a limited registration exercise been conducted, a potential 1.2 million people would have got onto the register, roughly the same number it would have exceeded this newly compiled register by. The difference is easy to explain, however. Due to severe underinvestment in the Birth & Deaths Registry, the names of dead persons are not being removed from the register.”
The think tank arrived at this position because, according to its research, the just ended voter’s registration exercise eliminated approximately 1,156,000 dead people from the register. In that sense, IMANI indicates, this could have been done without the waste of millions of cedis.
“Since 2012, projecting from the average death rate and adjusting for only those above 18 years of age and the proportion of the population on the voters register, 1.156 million names of dead persons must have been present on the register. It is clear that this accounts for the entire difference between the 18 million names that would today be on the register had a limited registration been conducted and the figures recorded in this exercise.
“In short, $150 million of our very scarce resources have been wasted to remove the names of dead people, who cannot be impersonated because of the biometric system, instead of the $1.5 million which would have more than doubled the capacity of the Births and Deaths Registry to improve records and automate notifications to the EC.”
The registration of minors has been a long standing issue in the electoral process of the country. Many people have called for a remedy to this issue and it was anticipated that the completed voter registration exercise would have found a remedy to this issue.
On the contrary, IMANI pointed out that, the problem will continue to persist as no measure was put in place to curb the registration of minors on to the voter roll.
“What about minors? Nothing implemented in this mass registration exercise can be said to be more effective in removing minors than in previous 5 registration exercises. About 40% of registrants used guarantors and virtually all of the remaining registrants used Ghana Cards. But recall that over 80% of Ghana Card registrants used guarantors too.
“In short, 90% or more of registrants are ultimately on this new Roll because of guarantors. A system whereby people merely state that in their belief a person is above 18 years old and is a Ghanaian cannot be an improvement in anyway.
“What is worse, current court decisions have merely served to wound the only institution whose true mandate is to report on birth dates and deaths, the two data points crucial to removing minors and dead people from the Roll.”
