The Electoral Commission (EC) has finalised an arrangement with political parties to begin the process of transferring votes for students in tertiary institutions, security personnel, and prison inmates from July 3-5 in preparation for the general elections on December 7, 2024.
This is to enable the above target groups the opportunity to cast their votes in their current areas of residence having registered in different jurisdictions and comes on the back of the transfer of votes of the general voting population a fortnight ago.
The exercise is in response to requests by the hierarchy of the security agencies, the National Union of Ghana Students and the political parties for the Commission to reopen the register to give special dispensation to the target group as they may be on campus, their duty posts or at the prison on election day.
To ensure transparency of the process, agents of the political parties will be able to observe the process to enhance the fairness of the electoral process.
Speaking with journalists after an Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting in Accra on Monday, representatives of the governing New Patriotic Party and the National Democratic Congress said they were ready to cooperate with the EC for a smooth process.
Director, IT and Election of the NDC, Dr Edward Omane Boamah, said the opposition party welcomed the decision by the EC to give the target group the opportunity to transfer their votes and participate in the democratic process but would insist that only qualified persons engaged in this transfer.
“It applies to students and only students so no one should think of gerrymandering where people would be brought in to transfer their votes. What this means is that students must provide their verifiable student identification cards when they apply for the transfer and the security personnel must also be in their uniform and (backed by their identification cards),” he said.
On proxy applications that have thus far been received by the EC, Dr Boamah said the election management body breached its own established procedure where in several places, the biometric details of proxy applicants could not be verified.
“With that kind of manual proxy application, it means that people can even vote for deceased persons. We don’t want people to be voting for dead people so we have asked the EC to check their system against the total number of proxies they’ve received and the reflections of their biometrics against that because we have evidence of people who went through the process without their biometrics,” he alleged.
The Director of Election for the NPP, Gary Nimako Marfo, on his part said it was important the technical capacity of the EC was enhanced to deliver an election which result would be accepted by all.
He said the Constitutional Instrument 127 which governs the polls clearly delineates the election activities and the EC must apply same and endeavour to conduct the process in a free, fair and transparent manner to give stakeholders the confidence.
“We are all looking at the EC to apply the appropriate laws to ensure that this multiparty democracy grows that the election ahead of us will be conducted in a free and fair manner for a winner to be declared and for all stakeholders to accept the outcome,” he said.
The processes to compile a final register for the elections, Mr Marfo said were enormous and “for all of us we expect the EC to be transparent, open and provide a level playing field for all stakeholders”.
BY JULIUS YAO PETETSI
