What Ghanaians Need To Know About The Current Ghana’s Voters Roll

Elections provide an opportunity for peaceful competition between political ideas and personalities and for political and social debates to play out in an arena of constructive conflict. Biometric technology is used to recognize or identify persons physical characteristics based on one or more intrinsic trait for example fingerprints, face, iris, and hand geometry.

The basic task of all biometric systems is recognizing patterns to distinguish those that match closely enough to be considered identical and those that have great enough variation to be considered non-identical

To do this, the system must first register and store the characteristics for example the fingerprint, and then be able to match this with new information. The system can either be asked to verify someone claiming to be a person known to the system, in which case the system only has to compare the new information with one item in the stored data, or be asked to identify a person, thus requiring the system to compare the new information with every item in the database.

Biometric voters' registration is therefore the process of capturing information of voters including their unique physical traits or features for the purpose of compiling a voters' roll.

The Electoral Commission is currently embarking on a limited voter registration to register Ghanaians who have turned 18 years and those who are above 18 years who for one reason or another could not register in 2012 Biometric voter registration exercise.

EC's announcement to embark on another limited voter registration was viewed with suspicion by the Political Parties and voters, arising from the fact that while the previous registration was on-going and at the end of the exercise the EC gave high hopes to the people of Ghana about its ability to detect double as well as multiple registration and went further to explain the modus operandi by these perpetrators to outwit the Registration Officials.

It may be recalled that, after the 2012 BVR exercise the EC announced its readiness to prosecute over 800,000 offenders in the law courts for multiple registration. The bold declaration and utterance of EC ignited the 'fear of God' in these election cheats which has become the bane of Ghana elections. The confidence of Ghanaians in the EC in the application of the biometric technology was bolstered by this singular act when people thought for once these perpetrators would be exposed and dealt with to sanitize the country's body politic. Did the prosecution take place? What happened to the excess data resulted from the multiple registration?

In the 2013 Election Petition hearing, the Supreme Court Judges directed EC to clean the voter register. Has this direction been carried out? If this has been done, how has it impacted on the 2012 voters roll?

So far, what we see is EC rather offering flimsy excuses for the double and multiple entries that took place and put the blame on the inefficiency of Data Entry Officials. Till today, EC has not convinced anyone that the names have been deleted from the registers. The attempt to explain the conflicting total voter figures between the Presidential and Parliamentary votes with the diaspora registration figures at the Supreme Court has eroded any confidence the people have in the EC to add on, onto the existing voter register.

This diaspora registration of 2012 was based on Section 8 (i) of PNDCL 284 which had been repealed by Act 699 of 2006 (ROPAL). Has the ROPAL been nullified by the action of EC? Will this limited registration be extended to the Ghanaian citizens abroad in accordance with ROPAL?

The Centre for African Democratic Affairs (CADA) believes that the above assertion accounts mainly for EC loss of credibility in the eyes of the people and so far not succeeded in their attempt to redeem its battered image

It is the hope of CADA that the EC has reviewed previous registration exercises in a bid to forestall negative practices that characterized those registration operations and that it is well prepared for the current one.

Voter registration is a very important aspect of the electoral process. The quality of the registration process and the product (voters' roll / voters register) determine the outcome of any election and consequently the stability of the democratic dispensation of the country.

It is worth stating the usefulness of voter registration so no one underestimates how powerful a tool it is in an electoral process. The importance of voter registration, among others includes the following:-

i. It provides a comprehensive list of all registered voters. Only those persons whose names are on the voters' list will be able to vote in an election.

ii. It helps to establish the total number of registered voters.

iii. It enhances controls on fraudulent attempts to vote, such as ineligible voting, impersonation, double voting, etc.

iv. Provision of registration cards to all registered voters. These ID cards in addition to the physical features of voters captured in the biometric process serve to identify voters on the voters' roll.

v. It facilitates planning for procurement and distribution of materials for voting.

vi. It provides the basis for ballot accounting at the close of voting and counting.

vii. It also helps political parties in their campaign planning.

There are guidelines and regulations that govern the implementation of the limited voters' registration exercise and the EC has made these available in its manual. CADA will want to admonish all stakeholders to be abreast with it so the country does not experienced the disorder witnessed in some Registration Centres during the 2012 BVR exercise.

Democracy is about representation of the people and such representation is engineered primarily by first registering eligible voters. To achieve effective representation the voters roll must be kept from being bloated. Once the voters roll is bloated the EC losses control over the elections and gives the opportunity to the temporal staff to do their 'own thing' at the Polling Stations and by the time it is discovered it becomes too late to rectify. This results' in widespread misgivings and leads to long electoral dispute or litigation which wastes everybody's time.

Over bloated registers also gives a false sense that a particular area which is sparsely inhabited has more numbers for the creation of a constituency. This practice may give rise to gerrymandering, one of the ills of democracy. It is an undemocratic practice whose architects will usually claim it is democratic because it brings participation of citizens in governance to their doorstep. They argue along this line because it gives them political advantage which ordinarily needs not be the case.

It is the hope of CADA that this time around selected registration centres for the limited exercise will receive its full complement of materials and officials who clearly understand their respective roles.

One major error observed during the previous registration process was non inspection of fingers to check the presence or otherwise of indelible ink mark. Registration Officers mostly went ahead to process applicants immediately the relevant identification documents were provided. This practice may have contributed greatly to the high number of multiple records detected at the end of the exercise. These are lessons learned and must not be allowed to happen again

Voter Registration centers must be made to open on time and the registration process run smoothly. Data Entry Clerks must be trained well to be conversant with the operations of the registration kit (Laptop computer, Fingerprint Scanner, digital camera, portable printer, Hand-held scanner) and also have reasonable speed in processing applicants so eligible voters are not unduly delayed to forestall agitations and in some cases disturbances at the centers.

In the remote parts of the country where there is no electricity, EC must provide generators and fuel to run these generators to charge computer batteries whenever they run down.

It is also CADA's expectation that majority of the Political Parties will observe the limited Biometric Registration exercise. Political Parties are the primary stakeholders in the electoral process and they need to partner and cooperate with the Electoral Commission to produce a credible voters' roll as part of ensuring greater transparency in Ghana's electoral process.

CADA wishes to remind all political party and government officials who go round registration centres forcefully without accreditation to desist from it and go by the laid down rules and regulations. This will help avoid political party activists having confrontation with Registration Officials who rightfully attempt to deny them entry.

Security environment in strongholds of the political parties and hotspots should be improved around the country. A deteriorating security environment put free and fair elections at risk. Heightened insecurity also poses a problem for electoral preparations, including voter registration, civic education and monitoring.

CADA is confident that this limited registration operation will not be bedeviled with many flaws in the process with hindsight from previous exercise.

Recent election events around the world show that fraud is undermining the electoral process in both established democracies and transitional societies. If the electoral process in Ghana is not pro-actively and strategically safeguarded, efforts to combat electoral fraud in an effective and credible manner will be extremely challenging so the EC must provide a framework for deterring this corrosive practice as the country goes into another voter registration.