Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By
William Yaw Owusu
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Persol Systems Limited, a wholly-owned Ghanaian
software development and systems integration firm has rekindled debate of the biometric
voting process, challenging the Electoral Commission (EC) to take a second look
at the system it adopted for the controversial 2012 general election.
Persol which also engages in IT consultancy said they
have developed systems which when adopted would deeply enhance the credibility
and integrity of the electoral process and stem the widespread incidence of fraud
and rigging that characterize elections in the country.
As part of the effort to convince Ghanaians of their
capabilities, Persol Systems organized a technical demonstration of their Voter
Verification and Voting Kit in Accra yesterday and it attracted representatives
of political parties (excluding the ruling NDC), civil society organizations
and the media.
Participants took turns to interrogate the process
and asked Persol Systems officials to vouch for their claims.
Michael Quarshie, Managing Director of Persol
Systems and Geoffrey Okantey, General Manager in charge of Software Development
took their time to explain issues to participants.
Mr. Quarshie said that they were committed to
supporting the EC to re-open and deepen the discussion for electoral reforms
following the disputed election that ended up in court.
He said “2016 does not have to be a doom situation.
We can dialogue to get the stakeholders to agree on what biometric platform is
best for the country in future electoral exercises.”
He said “our understanding in the area of biometric
deepened when the whole electoral process was subjected to judicial analysis and
as a result we have positioned ourselves to offer a game changer.”
Mr. Quarshie said that what happened during the 2012
general election was for voters to go through what he called “Voter
authentication” and not “Voter verification” as was touted.
“We are offering one-to-many and not one-to-one
verification. This solution simply tells which ballot is right or wrong.”
He suggested that in order to make the system
perfect, another firm could be tasked to clean the biometric data of voters
captured by another company.
He said that software they would provide would take
out from the system foreign materials or ballot stuffing and they would not
have to depend on “numeracy skills” of the Presiding Officers or election
officials.”
He said the system has been designed in stages such
that one part of the process would have to be compulsorily completed before the
next step can make itself available.
“For instance, if the law makes it mandatory for partitions
of the Presiding Officer to fill a portion of the data before during and after
the ballot and also for Presiding Officers to sign the pink sheet before
declaration of the results, then he/she would have to abide by it before the
system would allow another stage of the process.
Mr. Quarshie said with their system, there was no
need to print and import Statement of Poll and Declaration of Results forms popularly
known as Pink Sheets in advance since there was going to be print outs of the
whole process, documenting what had transpired up to the Collation Centre.
He said even though they are capable of providing a
platform for electronic voting the deep mistrust among some section of the
public in relation to the system currently meant they could not proceed to
highlight the issue for now.
For his part, Mr. Okantey said the system had been
designed to contain what he called “multiple electoral platforms,” adding “It
can accommodate different kinds of elections at the same time.”
He said the kits have been built to withstand any
weather conditions and added that the system would not generate duplicate data
in case of a system breakdown saying “voters are guaranteed a continuous voting
process should there be any truncation of the process.”
He said the system they are introducing is
tamper-proof and is verifiable by the parties and all stakeholders.
No comments:
Post a Comment