The Coalition of District Assembly Aspirants (CODAA) has counseled the Electoral Commission
to extend the limited voter registration exercise to electoral areas to promote local participation.

The aspirants asserted that using the Commission’s district offices as registration centers would lead to the EC not achieving its target of registering 1,350,000 voters due to distance and congestion.

Addressing a press conference in Ho, the Convener of CODAA, Mawunyo Agbe stressed that the Coalition would consider legal options if the EC fails to heed to their call.

“The Coalition demands that, the Electoral Commission quickly changes its position and deploy electoral materials to each Electoral Area to achieve the needed proximity by cutting down costs, wastage of manpower, the associated risks and a decision that would also end up boosting participation across the length and breadth of the nation”, he said.

He outlined congestion and distance as major factors that would lead to achieving about 60% of the target.

“A second look at the target set by the Electoral Commission seems already not feasible, because if it takes approximately 10 minutes on average to register one person within the 21 days period the Electoral Commission is seeking, to do this and with the above arrangement how possible can it be, for example, if there are two centres at each District and with an exercise billed to start from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm (9hours daily).

"A careful look at the exercise can only end in registering just about 900,000 persons which would be a 40% short of their set target”, he illustrated.

He stressed the need for the EC to extend the limited voter registration to electoral areas to whip up public interest in the District Level Elections (DLE).

He further said that “checks indicate that, participation level in successive District Assembly Elections (DLE) are not encouraging, in 2019 November, District Assembly election figures showed less than 40% turnout across the country, the above abysmal performance, we expect must be considered by the EC before arriving at its modalities, especially considering the decision of bringing to the District's Office to register.

"What is shocking is that, it has eluded the EC that registration if done at the various electoral areas, whips up the enthusiasm in voters that district assembly elections is beckoning and the only resultant effect in decentralising the registration process only ends up in massive participation.”

The limited voter registration exercise is scheduled to begin on Tuesday, 12th September and close on Monday, 2nd October, 2023.