Voters in Ghana have over the years not been serious with the electoral process and that has cost the country several millions of Ghana cedis, Theophilus Tetteh Chaie, Member of Parliament for Ablekuma Central has said.

According to him, the challenges that bedeviled the special voting exercise on Thursday, 1 December could be attributed to the general attitude of all the stakeholders in the electoral process.

Speaking on TV3’s New Day programme on Saturday, he said: “We have had challenges this year which I believe in the first place shouldn’t have taken place. I am looking at it from different angles. I am looking at it from: one, on the part of we the voters, the security services, political parties and then the EC. So I am looking at all the stakeholders.

“On the side of the electorate, I believe that some of us have not taken the electoral system very seriously. When it comes to elections, there are rules and regulations. There are days set for registration, there are days set aside for exhibition of the register, there are days set for transfer of votes and all these processes have been put in place to ensure that on the final day, you as a voter will not have challenges in terms of looking for your name in the register, but over the period we have not taken these exercises very serious.

“When it comes to the registration exercise, the first one week you don’t see many people at the polling station, then the last two or three days then you see the whole polling stations across the country with massive influx of potential voters who want to register. At the end of the day what happens is that we have to extend the voting period at a cost to the entire nation. That has been our attitude.”