The presidential and parliamentary elections in 2024 will start at 7:00am and end at 3:00pm if the Electoral Commission (EC) succeeds in securing approval for this proposal which is contained in a Constitutional Instrument (C.I).
Currently, voting ends at 5:00pm but the Electoral Commissioner, Jean Mensah, is convinced the creation of additional polling centres would enable voting to go faster thereby justifying the need to reduce the voting time by two hours.
She explained that if the time is shifted to 3:00pm, collating and counting of ballot papers can be done before dusk.
“We are working at reducing the voter threshold at every polling station, to 500, so that there will be no pressure on the process. People can vote early, and then by 3:00pm, we would have closed the process,” she said.
Speaking at an inter-party dialogue hosted by the National Peace Council, in Accra, the EC Chairperson indicated that a special dispensation for females and disabled candidates is also included in the proposal.
The Commission is giving a 30 percent discount of filing fees to the above categories of contestants in the election, to promote inclusivity.
She reiterated that the EC remains firm in its stance on the matter of using the Ghana Card as the sole material of identification.
By Grace Hamoah-Agyemang
