Minority Brands Voter Registration At Senior High Schools Illegal

The Minority in Parliament has said the Electoral Commission’s program to register Senior High Schools onto the voter register being compiled for the 2020 election is illegal.

Minority Chief Whip, Muntaka Mubarak, said that the strange “mobile” registration scheme is against the Constitutional Instrument 91, which is to be replaced by CI 126.

As CI 126 did not make provision for the registration of SHS students on campuses, however, the Electoral Commission has said that it will use a new CI that is still maturing to make provisions for the students to transfer their votes.

The Minority is, however, saying that the registration of students on campuses is against the law.

Indeed, the law’s position has always been that SHS is off-limits to politics, but it does not specify that SHS students can register to vote.

Over the years, the practice has been that SHS students who feel they have come of age are left to decide whether to register or not at their own convenience and at their localities.

The EC claims that the decision to register the SHS students on campus was conceived after school heads had written to it and requested for students to be registered.

Meanwhile, the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has alleged that the decision to register SHS students is part of a larger plot by the Akufo-Addo government to rig the 2020 election and has filed a write against the EC in court.