Those affected by duplicate ID numbers can still vote on December 7 - EC

The Electoral Commission (EC) has clarified that those who have been affected by the duplicate voter identification card numbers in the recent mass registration exercise, can still vote on December 7, 2020 whether or not they pick up their new cards.

 "I also want to establish that, but because of possible use of the ID card for other purposes ,such as bank transactions, for voting the [duplicate] ID numbers will not have any effect, because if you go there, your biometrics will be scanned, your picture will appear, you will be verified biometrically and you will vote, it has nothing to do with the ID card [number], but because people normally use the ID card for other purposes, that is why we decided to change [them]."

"I want to explain again that, whether you have an ID card or not, on the 7th December, once you are duly registered, you can still vote,"

the Director of Elections at the EC, Dr Serebour Quaicoe said this in a television interview on Metro TV's Good Evening Ghana programme monitored by Graphic Online on Thursday night September 24, 2020.

Dr Quaicoe gave the explanation when the host of the television programme, Paul Adom Otchere phoned him and asked him about the means through which the Commission was reaching out to voters affected by the duplicate ID numbers and how they were getting them to pick up their new ID cards before Election Day noting that it is not everybody who will go to an exhibition centre to verify their details.

Dr Quaicoe explained that,

"if the Commission had not informed the people, that there has been duplicate of ID card numbers, they wouldn't have known... the video that was leaked and we said it is misleading, if you listen to the voice over, it said that we are doing registration, that is what the video was saying, but the people were not doing registration, they were only laminating, so the misleading part we said was in reference to the voice over that said we were doing new registration. Nobody is denying the fact that the ID cards were being laminated, but it was not new registration."