Why do we keep wasting money on ID cards?

Registrant recording his thumbprints

I was impressed that the Electoral Commission (EC) could register 13.5 million people in forty days in the Biometric Voters' Registration (BVR) Exercise. Considering the various impediments to registration--the never-ending queues with their characteristic molluscan tardiness, the violence at some centres, and the frustration that results from the awareness that this whole exercise might be a waste of time as it could easily be avoided or sped up--perhaps, it is a sign that Ghanaians really do want to vote. Over the years, we have acquired a reputation for holding regular presidential and parliamentary elections on a continent for which such processes are a rarity, so it behoves us to maintain the record. Ensuring the sanctity of the register that enables citizens to vote is an important first step in this endeavour, but did we really need to spend as much money and time on that exercise? Why can't I vote with my driver's licence? What about my passport? And even if one wanted to create these new cards, why couldn't the many literate registrants be made to fill their forms at home?

The last time I posed these questions to a friend, he was startled. "Voting with passports and driver's licences? There are too many fake ones in the system," he countered. According to the EC, there were at most 15,000 duplicate registrations which they are seeking to reconcile. To make a valid argument against driver's licences and passports, one would have to argue that the number of fake passports in the system far exceeds the proportions for the new voter's id cards. I would be surprised to learn of the existence of 15,000 fake passports but will grant that for the sake of argument. The reason we are not using other valid photo ids for elections is that we can afford not to.

It is disgusting that we have to print new id cards for almost every election cycle. Even more disgusting is the fact that we do not pay for this renewal of id cards on our own--the process is generously subsidized by donor nations and agencies--so we don't care.

Of course, there would be teething problems to deal with no matter what system we adopt, so that should not be an impediment to doing what is right. We already have biometric passports as the new standard for passports in the country. The more pervasive driver's licences also sport the relevant data that we have collected in the past for voter's ids. The missing ingredient in this recipe is the will to cut down on waste, but, alas, this will is quenched with milk from the teats of our perpetual benefactors of whose care we are yet to wean ourselves.