Mrs Jean Mensa may, perhaps, be the most worried woman in Ghana, today. As the Electoral Commissioner, she had stood up bravely against strong opposition to compile a new voters’ register, which she wonderfully did and successfully completed on August 6, 2020, after thirty-eight days. All those who openly opposed her, and even threatened her, had to shamefully concede in silence and disappear into the background, like Efo Worlanyo Tsekpo, Bono Regional Youth Organiser of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), who wilfully and willingly offer himself to be castrated if the Electoral Commission (EC) could successfully compile a new register. Others, who had advised people not to step in any centre to register, and even if they do go they should insist on producing their old voter ID cards as proof of citizenship against the new voters’ law, CI 126, like Kwesi Prat Jnr, Franklin Cudjoe and Bernard Mornah, all went to their various centres hoping not to be seen by law-abiding Ghanaians, provided the required proof of citizenship and registered. Two of the above mentioned came out to condemn the EC on unrelated issues, after they were caught on camera registering as new voters.
The Electoral Commission then slated September 18 to September 27, 2020 for people to check whether their names and particulars were in the new voters’ register, in a ten-day exhibition.
This exercise was, however, not successful. There were some discrepancies in the system which made some people, especially those affected, to question whether it was a good idea after all, to compile the new voters’ register.
Some of these discrepancies were same face and particulars appearing more than once against different voter ID numbers, and names and particulars not appearing at all among others. The interesting thing is, apart from a few insignificant cases, when those affected went to the EC district offices to verify from the system whether, what they were told and made to see at the centres were the truth, they found their names and particulars intact in the data base. They had been duly registered, and so can vote on Monday, December 7, 2020.
In my opinion, and I am entitled to it, could it not be possible that some moles found themselves in the EC offices and successfully produced such registers to create panic and fear among the citizenry to give Mrs Jean Mensa a bad name? They could, by virtue of their positions in the EC offices, alter what is coming out from the data bases in a matter of garbage in, garbage out, but luckily could not interfere with what is in it. Because, how come information in the data bases were correct and intact, but printing them out creates problems? Someone could possibly be playing with the machines. So I will urge the EC to locate and smoke out such miscreants before they come out with something worse in December to make people who wish the EC evil have cause to disrupt the process and throw this country into darkness.
But, wait, is this the first time discrepancies have been found in new registers? One notable problem was voters going to vote in the centres they registered in, only to be told their names were not in the register. And this was even after they had verified their details during the exhibition and found their names and particulars intact.
Such people had two choices to make that day, either to move from polling centre to polling centre with the hope of finding their names somewhere, or give up voting entirely and go home.
We hope such a thing would not come out in Mrs Jean Mensa’s era. Her name must be written in history as the best Electoral Commissioner we have had.
I will suggest that the various voter registers for the constituencies must be printed out in good time by trusted and loyal workers, who think of the welfare of nation, and culled-over by another such team. One thing is such a team of special workers must have host-specific passwords so that their details will appear and be recorded as and when they enter into the system and what they end up producing, so that in cases of discrepancy they can easily be identified and sanctioned appropriately.
Meanwhile, are those, especially the opposition, who are descending on the Commissioner and blaming her for compiling a genuine register in an I-Told-You-So mode, truly sincere in their criticisms? Such errors, and even worse ones, have occurred before during voter ID exhibitions and I can refer to eight of such instances found in the exhibition of the 2012 voters’ register exhibition.
1). Cases of missing names occurred in 152 districts across the country; 2). Same voter ID number for multiple of voters in the same register at the polling station, which occurred in nine districts; 3). Displacement of voters to polling stations other than where they registered, which occurred in four districts; 4). Flowers appearing in photo space of voters, instead of real human faces, which occurred in four districts; 5). All voters from some polling centres had FO appearing on their faces, which occurred in twelve districts; 6). Swapping of pictures of voters in polling station registers, which occurred in five districts; 7). A voter with multiple ID numbers across polling stations, which occurred in seven districts and 8). Duplicate voter ID numbers, which occurred in seven districts.
But how come nobody talked about these in 2012 the way they are talking about what is happening in the voters’ exhibition today? In all things, I suspect that there are people deliberately doing such things to incite public outcries.
I suggest the EC must put very qualified personnel to deliver the final voters’ registers for all the polling stations across the country. Such personnel must be among the top in this field, and all must be given passwords as their signatures, which will appear on any job they execute as a form of easy identification and tracking.
To those condemning the Electoral Commissioner for poor production of registers must know that she couldn’t have personally done it. It is people under her who did this, and this proves that she cannot rig any elections in favour of any party. It is those under her, especially in the polling centres, who can rig elections.
Hon Daniel Dugan
The post Technical Errors with Voters’ Register Could there be the Possibility of Moles in the System? appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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