Haruna rules out E-voting

Haruna Iddrisu is Ghana's Minister of Communications


By William Yaw Owusu

Tuesday February 9, 2010
A conference on biometric voter registration and electronic voting (e-voting) has commenced in Accra with a call on the Electoral Commission (EC) not to dismiss the concept without subjecting its viability to a ‘deeper and wider public interrogation.’

The two-day event is being organised by the Danquah Institute (DI), a policy think thank, research and analysis centre to create a national platform for stakeholders to lead the discussion on the possibility of facilitating the adopting of biometric voter registration and subsequently the e-voting system in Ghana.

Opening the well attended conference, Haruna Iddrisu, Minister of Communications said even though the implementation of both the biometric voter registration and e-voting were practicable in the long term, they could not be introduced anytime soon.

“All political parties have endorsed biometric registration which is prelude to e-voting and what we are doing here today will help to shape our electoral process in the future. However, we do not have the requisite infrastructure for a speedy implementation of the all important projects in the short term”.

He suggested to all political parties to channel their effort towards the e-voting project by 2016 saying “the EC does not have the capacity to supervise the project now. I still think we can get a cut-off point by 2016 by which time we would have been well prepared.”

He identified challenges such as the review of existing electoral laws to accommodate the project, reducing the illiteracy rate and building the capacity of the EC to efficiently supervise the project.

Dr. William Ahadzie, Executive Secretary of the National Identification Authority (NIA) speaking on the NIA registration and its implications for the creation of a credible voters register, said the authority had the capacity to design and produce a list of all eligible voters to help the EC validate its database.

He said the mass registration currently underway in some parts of the country is “more secured and clearly safer”, adding “the data we collect has high integrity levels”.

Dr. Ahadzie said after the mass registration had ended, the authority would continue to register every Ghanaian saying “we are establishing regional and district offices as well as introduce registration officials to densely populated areas to register everybody.”

Nana Asante Bediatuo, a legal practitioner speaking on the legality of the introduction of e-voting said the project when successful would eliminate the incentive for political violence, explaining that those who resort to physical attacks on political opponents would be discouraged by the system.

He however said that, the e-voting concept cannot be implemented without the amendment of the existing law.

He also said the NIA clearly had a wider mandate than the EC and be utilized effectively by the commission to sanitize the electoral system.

Nana Bediatuo said if the e-voting agenda were to be pursued vigorously then it was going to compete for attention with issues such as the impending district level elections and a foreseeable referendum arising out of the impending constitutional review.

Hubert Akomea, Head of IT at the EC during questions and answers said the commission was working towards the biometric voter registration exercise for the next elections but the e-voting was impossibility without an amendment of the existing law.

He said that before the EC could use any data from the NIA, the laws needed to be amended, saying “the current legislation prevents us from using any voters’ register that we have not compiled ourselves and which we have no answers to.”

Ben Ephson, a journalist and election analyst disagreed with Mr. Akomea saying “this is the time for the EC to take advantage of the NIA”.

Yaw Osafo Maafo, a former Minister said “let us look at our legislation. Nobody should hide behind his/her turf to put the country into an unnecessary expenditure when those resources could be used for other developmental purposes”.

Alhaji Salisu Baba, an IT consultant said the EC taking advantage of the NIA could save a lot of resources for the nation, adding ‘repeated registration by the EC is unacceptable.”

In his welcome address, Professor Addo Fening Chairman of the governing board of DI said, “in Ghana’s volatile and charged partisan political environment, it is extremely important that we have a trusted election process, where elections will be regarded as fair, even by the losing side.”

“We cannot, as a nation dismiss without the benefit of a full domestic interrogation the viability of electronic voting unless of course the EC has better options of how to tackle not only multiple registration but also multiple voting, ballot box theft, ballot box stuffing, high numbers of spoilt ballots, long delays in declaring the President-elect and the violence and intimidation that take place to create opportunities for the above electoral vices to take place”.

Professor Ken Attafuah, a lawyer and criminologist who chaired the conference said there are still problems with the credibility of electoral outcomes which needed to be dealt with once and for all.

He said e-voting may not be foolproof but represents considerable improvement and signals and optimism to solve election related disputes.

See: www.dailyguideghana.com