By Prince Ahenkorah
The Electoral Commission of Ghana has responded to the National Democratic Congress’s call for forensic audit into the voter’s register. The Commission stated that the provisional voters register is bound to contain discrepancies, as one cannot expect a perfect provisional register.
The commission made this assertion in a letter to the NDC, dated September 26, 2024, and signed by the Chairperson of the commission, Mrs Jean Mensa.
The commission highlighted that “It is for this reason that Regulations 23 and 24 of C.I. 91 provide clear and well-defined pathways to cure and deal with likely anomalies that are bound to arise from the Registration of Voters, including missing names, errors in biographical data, the existence of deceased persons on the Register, incorrect designation of Polling Stations among others”.
The commission further told the NDC that “It is for these reasons that we (The Electoral Commission) assured you (NDC) during our meeting on the 6th of September, 2024 that the category of issues you presented had largely been resolved. We indicated that the issues you had detected were the usual issues that arise from every Registration”
The commission further claimed that to allay the fears of the NDC, they requested the party to furnish the commission with the discrepancies identified. “To allay your fears then and to reassure you of the credibility of the Voters Register, we requested that you present us with your data on the discrepancies you had detected. The sole purpose was to demonstrate to you that your issues with the Register had been resolved”.
“Unfortunately, we have not received the data from you. As you will recall, there was an agreement that you would provide us with the data to allow us to investigate and report back within a week. We believe that had you followed through with this process, you would today, attest to the credibility and integrity of the Register and rescind your call for a forensic audit”.
The Electoral Commission, further assured the NDC that a large number of the discrepancies identified has been corrected.
“We, however, assure you that the Commission has largely corrected all the discrepancies identified during and after the Exhibition”.
The commission stated four rigorous methods employed in cleaning the Provisional Voters Register, stating that “Voters to our Exhibition Centres and via our electronic media, who detected errors with their details, had them corrected. Also, Exhibition Officers in all our 40,000 plus (Exhibition Centres) scrutinized the Register and reported discrepancies for correction.
Again, District Electoral Officers relied on the Register Viewer to scrutinize the Register and correct discrepancies and finally IT staff utilized the Register Viewer to scrutinize the register and reported discrepancies for correction.
The Commission stated that it adopted this same approach prior to the production of the Final Register in 2020 and it worked effectively. “Evidence shows that there were no voters who were denied the opportunity to vote during the 2020 Elections. This is the same approach we have adopted to clean the 2024 PVR and we have no doubt that it will deliver the same outcome, namely a credible and robust Final Voters Register ahead of the 2024 Elections”.
“As the body mandated by Article 45 (a) of the 1992 Constitution to compile the register of voters and to revise it as such periods as may be determined by law, we urge you to trust us to perform our functions as enshrined in the Constitution. As you are aware, the Electoral Commission of Ghana is respected globally for its ability to perform its functions, which include the compilation of a robust Voters Register and ultimately the conduct of free, fair and transparent Elections”.
The commission further indicated that “Sittings of District Registration Review Officers (DRROs) to hear and rule on cases including objections, Review and authentication of Provisional Register by DRROs, Implementation of DRROs decisions by District Officers,Verification of implementation of DRROs decisions by Regional Directorate, Verification of implementation of DRROs decisions by selected IT staff and Printing of Final Voters Register”.
“As we speak, our District Officers are implementing the decisions and recommendations of the DRROs. From the above, you will attest to the fact that the production of a Final Voters Register is a process, not an event. It does not happen overnight. It requires painstaking effort and processes to arrive at a Final Register. The above processes are ongoing and have not been exhausted. It is therefore our position that the call for a forensic audit is premature”.
The Commission stated that it provided PVR to the NDC and all other Political Parties on the 19th ofAugust, 2024. The Commission further indicated that the inability to provide the PVR earlier did not prevent any Political Party from scrutinizing the PVR.
“The live Online Exhibition of the PVR via short code *711*51# is still ongoing and voters can still check their details electronically till Election Day.”
The commission affirmed that the NDCs claims of illegal transfers is perpetuated on falsehood, as those transfers were legal. “Discrepancies in the Voter Transfers in your petition, you indicated that some 243,540 voters were transferred illegally in the Provisional Voters Register. You alleged that the said transfers were without the participation of the voters. We wish to state that the transfers were legal”.
The commission stated that they gave explanations to the NDCs allegations during a press conference on September 2, 2024.“During our press conference on 2″ September, 2024, the Commission explained that the 2024 Absent Voters List and the Transferred Voters List provided to the Political Parties inadvertently included all transfers undertaken since 2020, hence the higher than- expected-figures. This is not an illegality as claimed in your petition. What happened was that records for all transfers that took place in 2020, 2023 and 2024 were presented in the Register given to the Political Parties”.
“This resulted in a higher figure recorded for the transfers. This has been corrected. We acknowledge that our Officer in Pusiga carried out 38 unauthorized transfers. The said transfers have been reversed and the Officer’s appointment has been terminated”.
The commission again indicated that the NDC alleged that “3,957 Voters previously registered were deleted from the 2024 Provisional Register without explanation. “We wish to state categorically that the alleged missing Voters have not been deleted. They are either on the Voters Register or on one of the following lists-the Exceptions List, the Multiples List or the Transfer List.
The commission said that the NDC is yet to provide the evidence of the 15,000 instances of unidentifiable voter transfer paths that the party noted it has identified in the PVR.
The commission affirmed that“all data, from registration to transfers and amendments are not deleted from the Voter Management System. All voters registered in the VMS can be accounted for. There exists a trail that explains each voter’s movement. Even in instances where voter data is corrupted, there still exists evidence (paper or electronic) of a registration having taken place”.
This allows the Commission to identify the voters and invite them for inclusion, should it be revealed that they are not in the Provisional Voters Register.
The commission further reiterated that the production of the Provisional Voters Register (PVR) cannot be perfect as it involves the retrieval of data from a database and formatting into a Register that is presented to the Public. In the extraction of the data, network errors may occur and lead to the corruption of data which is then expressed in the PVR. This did occur in the production of the PVR.
However, this was detected and the affected registers were promptly regenerated during the Exhibition. The commission said that the integrity of the IT System the EC is confident in the security of its IT systems. The system has an audit trail that tracks all entries and modifications irrespective of how minute they are. It employs both physical and electronic access control policies which utilize either passwords or biometrics or both.
“We, however, recognize that there is no perfect system. A case in point is the transfers done by our Officer in Pusiga who exploited the absence of a liveliness check in voter identification and used ID photos to undertake unauthorized transfers of voters”.
It is important to note that, the Commission detected this anomaly, identified the vulnerability, and immediately put a remedy in place. More importantly, the presence of an audit trail allowed for the reversal of the Thirty-Eight (38) unauthorized transfers.
The system is equipped with measures to cure errors detected. Premature Nomination Process Base on Provisional Register Receipt of Nominations from Presidential and Parliamentary Candidates took place after the Exhibition of the Provisional Voters Register. Contrary to your position that it was premature because the Final Register was not made available for this purpose, Regulation 50 (1) of C.I 127 defines a registered voter as “a person whose name appears on the Provisional Voters Register.”
It is therefore lawful to use a PVR for the Nomination Exercise as all persons in the PVR are indeed Registered Voters and can support the Nomination of Candidates. Electoral Commission’s Admission of Irregularities C.I. 91 recognizes that there are bound to be discrepancies arising out of the Registration Exercise which are ultimately reflected in the PVR.
As such, Regulations 23 and 24 of C.I. 91 define clear pathways to correct these discrepancies before the Final Voters Register is printed. The Commission’s admission of discrepancies in the PVR was simply to allay the fears of Voters and to assure Voters that the discrepancies identified were normal and not unusual. Indeed, discrepancies in the PVR do not make the Register unfit for the Elections.
Electoral Commission’s Rejection of Transparency Measures
It is well known that the Commission is transparent. It has nothing to hide and continues to open its doors and processes, from Registration to the Declaration of Results to the General Public.
Re-Exhibition of the Provisional Voters Register
Whilst the Commission is not opposed to undertaking another Physical Exhibition of the corrected PVR in the Forty Thousand (40,000) plus Exhibition Centres, given the time it takes to print and distribute the PVR (three to four weeks), it will not be feasible to achieve this due to the limited time to the General Election.
The Commission intends to implement an Online Exhibition of the PVR at no cost to Registered Voters. Voters will be able to report on anomalies with their details within a time frame to be made available to the Public. The Voters Register will be displayed online until Election Day.
The Commission takes this opportunity to assure the NDC and the General Public that it has largely resolved all the discrepancies identified in the PVR. The Commission achieved this in 2020 and will do it again in 2024.
The commission again calls the NDC to the discussion table as they believe it will afford the opportunity to demonstrate to the NDC that the discrepancies detected in the PVR have been resolved.
