Dr Serebour Quaicoe, Director of Electoral Services at the Electoral Commission (EC) says even if they plan to use the current Voters' Register for the 2020 elections they will still see lots of human contacts which will flout the social distancing measures.
Dr Quaicoe says to be able to use the current register, a limited registration and validation exercise will have to be done and that involves a lot of human contacts.
He is off the view that Ghana is better off compiling a new register because both processes will have people coming close to each other.
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"Even if we are to use the current Voters' Register, there will still be human contact, there will not be any social distancing, because we would have to do a cleaning exercise of the current register, do a limited registration and validation exercise and do some form of other exercises, people will troop in to do that, so using the old register or current will still flout the social distancing measure, all these validation exercises brings us to square one so we are better off using that to compile a new one"
He also explained why the current register was used for the 2019 MMDCEs election but not fit to be used for the general elections.
"When it comes to District elections people do not go to court to challenge the results but a general elections people can take us on that is why we need a new one so we know it is totally credible, we do not want to make mistakes at all in a general election," he said on Joy FMs NewsFile.
The EC initially scheduled April 18, 2020, for the compilation of the new voters' register ahead of the December 2020 elections but following the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus in the country it was postponed and a new date has not been announced.
They have on several occasions explained that Ghana needs a new Voters' Register because it wants to ensure that the register that is used on the election day is more credible and efficient than the existing one hence the need for a new Biometric Voter Management System (BVMS).
Dr Quaicoe, however, says there is still a possibility that we may use the current Voters' Register for the elections in December but it will need a lot of adjustment.
As of April 15, 2020, Ghana had recorded 641 COVID-19 cases with 83 recoveries and 8 deaths so far.