Politics of Tuesday, 30 December 2014

Source: starrfmonline.com

New voter register not panacea to over-voting – Mornah

No matter how many new voter registration exercises the Electoral Commission undertakes, the problems of a bloated register and over-voting in elections will not be solved, General Secretary of the People’s National Convention (PNC), Bernard Mornah has said.

“We did a new register after the 2008 general elections, leading to the 2012 general elections. If today we are still complaining about bloated voters register, then what it means is that it’s not a new register that solves the problem of over-voting.

“It means there is something that we as active participants in the processes leading to registration ought to take into account,” Mr Mornah told Paa Kwesi Asare on Starr Today. His comments follow calls by the 2016 Flag-bearer of the main opposition New Patriotic Party, Nana Akufo Addo for a new voter register ahead of the 2016 general elections, since, according to him the current register is bloated.

Addressing party supporters in the UK, Akufo-Addo said: “The present voters register that we have in Ghana is bloated and anomalous and there is an urgent need to make sure we get a new voters register before the next election.”

Speaking on the same issue, Mr Mornah said: “In the past when we have had these speculations of bloated register, we have not done anything on our part, to overcome the over-bloating, so why is it that today we think that the solution to the over-bloating is to embark on an entirely new register when new registers have not solved the problems of bloated register?”

“It has never solved it. Because even after every other new registration that we have done, there is still complaints of bloated register so that certainly cannot be the problem,” he stressed.