EC Sets Date for 2023 District Level Elections
The Electoral Commission (EC) of Ghana has announced that the 2023 District Level Elections (DLE) will be held on Tuesday, December 19, 2023. The current term of serving Assembly Members, who were elected in 2019, will expire in December this year, necessitating the election of new Assembly Members for the next four years.
The EC will commence the registration of new voters for the DLE from September 12, 2023, to October 2, 2023, at its 268 District Offices.
The commission aims for a 60 percent voter turnout for this year’s elections and has called upon the media to raise awareness and educate the public about the significance of the exercise.
Mrs. Jean Mensa, the Chairperson of the Commission, stated that the DLE will be conducted in all 6,272 electoral areas, except for Nkoranza North and Nkoranza South in the Bono East Region. These areas did not have elections in 2019 due to security reasons and instead had their elections postponed and conducted in April 2021.
As a result, elections in these regions will not be held until 2025.
The EC has prepared a detailed program of activities for the upcoming DLE, which will be made available to the public in due course. Mrs. Mensa encouraged eligible individuals who are not yet on the electoral roll to register during the upcoming
registration exercise in order to participate in the December 19 elections. She reassured the public that this voter registration exercise will not be the only one before the 2024 General Election.
For individuals who have lost their voter ID cards, they can have them replaced at all District Registration Centres for a fee of GHC10. Mr. Samuel Tettey, the Deputy Chairman of the EC in Charge of Operations, highlighted steps the Commission will take to ensure high voter participation in the DLE.
This includes stakeholder engagements with civil society, security agencies, faith-based organizations, as well as increased awareness through media and public announcements by district electoral officers.
Over the years, the DLE in Ghana has witnessed low voter turnout. Data from the EC shows that in the late 1980s, the
National Average Voter Turnout was around 59.3 percent; in subsequent years, the turnout fluctuated between 29.3 percent and 41.6 percent until 2019, when it reached 33 percent.
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