Former Electoral Commission (EC) boss, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, is warning of possible multiple voting and ballot stuffing in the 2024 polls should the Commission’s proposed Constitutional Instrument receive parliamentary approval.
Dr. Afari-Gyan defines multiple voting as “where one person votes more than once.”
Ballot stuffing on the other hand, he explains is “where an unscrupulous person puts into the ballot box additional ballot papers that were not duly cast in accordance with the election law”.
These two voting anomalies, he argues, could occur because the proposed law captures two kinds of Voters Register
These are views expressed by Dr. Afari-Gyan in a statement published in the Daily Graphic.
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Regulation 3 of the proposed Constitutional Instrument (CI) reads as follows;
“Voters register
- (1) Each electoral area shall have a voters register consisting of the voters registers of the polling stations in the electoral area. (2) Each constituency shall have a register consisting of the voters registers of the electoral areas within the constituency concerned.”
Dr. Gyan explains that the current Biometric Verification devices used to identify voters at polling stations “do not so to speak, talk to each other in the field to indicate who has voted at which polling station.”
“Until such a time that the devices are configured to be interactive in this way, my concern about any of the two registers being used at the polling station is that it opens the door more widely to two kinds of voting infractions, namely multiple voting and ballot stuffing”.
He believes this will be problematic if not checked.
Dr Afari-Gyan also points that it could potentially change the meaning of overvoting from more people voting than were certified at a specific polling station to more people voting than the number listed in the electoral area register or the constituency register.
