No e-voting in 2012, declares Electoral Commission

Ghana will not be using the e-voting technology for the 2012 polls, the Electoral Commission (EC) has declared.

The declaration is in response to a campaign for the country to adopt electronic voting for future polls.

The system allows eligible voters to select their preferred candidate by pressing a button on a computer.

Campaigners say the system ensures greater transparency. But after meeting the various political parties Tuesday, the EC said it would rather implement the biometric registration.

Deputy Chairman in charge of Finance at the Commission David Kanga told Joy News:“In principle the commission is not against e-voting…but we know as professionals that there is something that you always miss in e-voting and that thing is transparency because it is not very easy for the voter to see, especially during counting, how somebody arrived at a certain number of votes.”

This he said is in sharp contrast to the manual voting where “voters see physically, they feel it and can go and touch the ballot papers and see that these ones are more than those ones so that if they say the big ones represent the winners they can accept it,” he explained.

He said there has to be a thorough and comprehensive education on e-voting before it can be implemented.

The opposition NPP, which has been pushing for the electoral roll to be published, has welcomed the decision to employ the use of biometric registration.

Party chairman Jake Obetsebi Lamptey tells Joy News the system will strengthen the credibility of the polls.