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The position of the Electoral Commission of Ghana has always been that elections are determined at the polling station. Over the years, the electoral system and processes have been improved and enhanced.
Every stakeholder familiar with Ghana’s electoral system understands that given the level of transparency and active participation of all stakeholders, especially the political parties, at each stage of the electoral process, it is practically impossible to rig elections in Ghana for one party or the other.
Yet, this has not stopped political parties and other stakeholders with vested interests from accusing the Electoral Commission (EC) of seeking to rig elections during election years.
Allegations of rigging elections are a global phenomenon not unique to Ghana. But what does it mean to rig elections? According to the Collins Dictionary, “If someone rigs an election, they dishonestly arrange it to get the result they want or to give someone an unfair advantage” (https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/rig-an-election).
The Cambridge Dictionary defines “Ballot rigging” as, “the practice of using illegal methods to obtain a particular result in an election” (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ballot-rigging#google_vignette).
From these definitions and others not quoted here, rigging elections involves manipulating the electoral process to illegally interfere with the elections. This could mean helping to increase the votes of a particular candidate or party, depressing the votes of another, arranging to fix the results, or using illegal methods to obtain a particular outcome.
Ghana’s electoral process comprises electoral laws, the demarcation of electoral boundaries, voter registration, candidate nomination and the elections themselves. What makes Ghana’s electoral process so credible that it is impossible to rig elections?
In Part One of this two-part series, we will discuss voter registration, the exhibition of the provisional voters register, balloting for positions on the ballot paper, and the printing of ballot papers.
The Constitution of Ghana and other electoral laws provide for credible elections. All stakeholders, especially political parties and candidates, are required to adhere to these electoral laws.
By law, 21 days before the registration exercise, the Electoral Commission (EC) is required to publish in the Gazette all the registration centres where voters can apply to be registered.
All political parties in Ghana and observer groups are aware of these registration centres. Political parties have their agents at every registration centre nationwide. Additionally, accredited observer groups are present at these centres.
Political parties receive both start-of-day and end-of-day reports at each registration centre. The start-of-day report provides the total number of voters registered at the registration centre by the close of the previous day, while the end-of-day report provides the cumulative number of registered voters at the close of day.
Between the two reports, voters registered at a registration centre for each day can be calculated. Political party agents collate daily figures of registered voters from these reports, in addition to their own independent tallies.
The total number of registered voters published by the EC at the end of each day matches the figures collated by the political parties from all gazetted registration centres nationwide.
This is as a result of the start-of-day and end-of-day reports, and also as a result of the fact that the political parties themselves also collate daily figures.
For 2024, once the mop-up registration exercise is completed in August, the EC will publish the total number of voters registered from the 2024 limited voters registration exercise, a number that will tally with what the political parties have collated.
During the registration exercise, voters whose applications were challenged in accordance with the law have their applications examined by the District Registration Review Committee (DRRC) set up in every district.
The role of the DRRC is to examine all challenges and to determine, based on available evidence, whether to uphold or reject a challenge. If a challenge is upheld, the voter is removed from the register.
Membership of the DRRC, by law, includes one representative of each registered political party active in the district.
Finally, for voters who are deemed to have registered multiple times in violation of the law, their applications undergo a review by an Adjudication Review Committee (ARC), which includes political party representatives and representatives of selected Civil Society Organisations.
The ARC examines all cases of multiple registration flagged by the registration system. If the ARC confirms that a voter has indeed engaged in multiple registration, the voter is placed on the Multiple Registration List, barring them from voting.
Before the mop-up registration exercise and the exhibition of the provisional voters register in August 2024, the commission received and processed applications from registered voters for the Transfer of Votes, Proxy Votes and Special Voting.
Political parties were allowed to observe all these processes, despite initial violent events witnessed during the Transfer of Votes exercise which caused the commission to temporarily suspend the decision to allow political parties to observe the exercise.
To be continued
