Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Monday, August 01, 2016
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has opposed
the decision of the Electoral Commission (EC) to transmit the results of the
December 7 general elections electronically.
NPP Campaign Manager, Peter Mac Manu,
said the party was not happy with the conduct of the EC, which is bent on using
electronic means to transmit the results in the crucial elections.
Selection Process
Preparations are underway for the EC to
award the contract for e-transmission, and five companies have already been shortlisted
to do a demonstration in the latter part of next week.
The EC placed an ‘Expression of Interest’
advert in the dailies on 2nd March, 2016 and 16 companies responded. Five of
them namely: InfoTrend, BSystems/Computer
Foundation, Persol Systems, Scytl and Smartmatic, were picked for final
selection.
No Invitation
According to the NPP Campaign Manager, no
political party or civil society organization has received invitation from the
EC to attend the demonstration, adding that the commission had not been able to
convince the electorate on the need for e-transmission during the election.
“First, there is no law which gives the
EC the mandate to electronically transmit results. Nothing in the law before parliament
now - C.I. 94 - makes mention of it,” Mr Mac Manu argued.
“Also, the law talks about the EC
receiving all the collated results from the Statement of Poll and Declaration
of Results (Pink Sheets), signed by party agents at the constituency level, and
the expectation is that they will be brought to the National Collation Centre
before the winner of the presidential race will be declared,” he added.
Pink Sheets
One of the main demands from the election
petition, which followed the 2012 presidential poll, is for the returning
officer (in this case, Mrs Charlotte Osei, EC boss) not to declare the results
without having physical custody of all the collated pink sheets from all (now 29,000
polling stations) nationwide.
Although the EC has not said it intends
to declare a winner based on the results transmitted electronically, the NPP is
not convinced about why it (EC) would spend money on e-transmission.
“If the EC does not intend to declare
results based on e-transmission, then for what purpose is that option to us? We
require some good answers here,” Mr. Mac Manu charged.
“The focus, we believe, should rather be
on first ensuring that a certified true copy of the pink sheet, from each of
the 29,000 stations, is brought to the National Collation Centre before the
Chairperson of the EC finally declares the winner. They can all be brought to
Accra within 48 hours from even the remotest part of Ghana,” he stressed.
Transmission Integrity
The NPP has also raised another concern
over the integrity of e-transmission, which it believes has been compounded by
the reluctance of the electoral management body to be transparent to key
stakeholders and the general public on the details of the proposed
e-transmission.
“Potentially, the results can be tampered
with and by that I mean modified mid-transmission, particularly in the absence of
strong network security and encryption,” he expressed.
“Also, if the system starts sending and
breaks down midstream, there could be confusion. We have seen that in Ecuador,
where for two weeks the results were not coming. We have seen that in Mexico
and we have also seen e-transmission failing in Kenya, which was the main
reason behind their election petition in 2012,” he recalled.
Interesting Questions
“Should the partial results sent be
accepted? How should the rest be captured? In the process could there be a
manipulation of the results?” he queried, adding, “Results transmission does
not in any way control the abuse of the electoral process. It does not address
‘foreign’ ballots. It is an ‘after-the-fact’ process. If there are only 800
voters on the register, how will the system prevent transmission of results
cast in excess of that number?”
He admitted e-transmission would ensure
quick declaration of results, but noted that it could also end up creating
confusion where there is a discrepancy between the electronically transmitted
results and what is contained on the actual pink sheets.
“If the EC was really serious about
e-transmission, then it should have backed that with legislation. No constitutional
instrument supports this radical shift - very ironic for a commission that
insists on deleting names according to existing law, even where the Supreme
Court has ordered so to be done.”
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