Cleaning voter roll: LMVCA welcomes SC ruling

Pressure group, Let My Vote Count Alliance (LMVCA) has welcomed the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Electoral Commission (EC) takes measures to clean the voter register ahead of the November 7 election.

A panel of seven judges on Thursday May 5 unanimously indicated that there was a need for a credible register and invalid elements in the current register must be expunged.

The court has asked the EC to remove the names of those who registered with their National Health Insurance Scheme cards from the current register and accord them the opportunity to register with the appropriate ID cards.

The judges also asked the EC to remove the names of minors who registered ahead of the last elections in 2012 and dead people whose names are still captured in the register.

The ruling of the court was in connection with a case filed by two politicians, Abu Ramadan from the Peoples National Convention (PNC) and one Evans Nimako, who had prayed the court to stop the EC from using the 2012 register of voters to conduct the upcoming November polls, with reason that the document was not a credible one.

They argued that since the commission rejected a demand to compile a new register, at least an exercise to clean up the document by removing names of persons deemed ineligible, must be conducted.

Convener of LMVCA, David Asante, who expressed excitement about the ruling told Class FM’s Nabil Ahmed Rufai that they still hold some fears because “they used to think that the register was bloated by some 600,000 names of dead persons. But the ruling to expunge those who registered with NHIS cards makes the matter murkier. Our point has been upheld not only by the court of public opinion but the Supreme Court”.