Contested election results: Transformative role of technology

Elections are not one-time events. They are a process.

However, the declaration of the election result serves as a milestone event since it serves as the pinnacle of elections that determine victors and losers; therefore, every stakeholder in the elections is keenly interested in it.

Across emerging democracies and advanced ones, results are heavily contested, especially in close elections.  For example, the results were disputed during the U.S. 2000 Presidential Election, leading to the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court case, which was decided five-four in favour of President George Bush.

Numerous examples of election results dispute flaying into violence, including Kenya’s 2007 elections, are now a reality.

Given this background, a lot of stakeholders are working around election results. The key stakeholders include the elections management body (EMB), civil society organisations, political parties and the media. 

Historically, these organisations relied on manual processes aided by basic technology like fax machines to collate and transmit results; today, digital technologies are relied on to manage result processing systems.  

Primary

As the legal mandate body, electoral management bodies are the primary organisations responsible for collating results. For general elections, the parliamentary results are declared at the constituency level, whereas presidential results are declared at the national level.

Therefore, each process of results takes a unique path. The basic unit of elections is the polling station, where voters cast their ballots, and results are declared; after the successful completion of elections, the ballots are counted, and the results are recorded on the declaration of the results sheet; in Ghana, it is known as the pink sheet, after its colour. 

Hours are spent counting these results, and after a successful count, the parliamentary results are declared at the constituency level and results are transmitted to the national head office of the electoral commission for the official tally and record of outcomes.  

On the other hand, the presidential results are not declared at the constituency level, but at the national level, in this case, the results are transmitted through digital means to the EMB regional collation centre; thereafter, the regions transmit these results to EMB national collation Centre, where all results from the country are collated and declared.

There is no precise timeline for the declaration of final presidential results; however, the speed of the final declaration of results is the function of how fast the manual counting of each ballot is cast and the speed at which the results are transmitted to the various stages of collation. 

The use of digital technologies, especially the transmission of results, has improved the speed of the declaration of results over the years. 

Parallel Vote Tabulation

Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT), also known as Quick Count, is a methodology deployed by non-partisan election observers to verify official election results independently.

Although EMBs have elaborate systems for results collation, why is there a need for civil society organisations, especially election observers, to put in place a PVT?

PVTs do not replace the work of EMBs, but complement their work by offering an additional layer of scrutiny, reducing uncertainty, reinforcing the credibility of the official results, and fostering trust in the democratic process while offering a mechanism for peaceful resolution of election results complaints.

PVT uses a statistical sample of polling stations to make rapid assessments of election outcomes and results. It involves collecting and analysing data from a representative sample of polling stations. 

The data is transmitted from the polling stations using mobile phones, among other tools, to the PVT collation system, this data is aggregated to estimate overall results, thereby providing a mechanism to check if the official results align with PVT observations.

During upcoming Ghana’s 2024 elections, the Coalition of Domestic Observers (CODEO) is deployed PVT using a sample of approximately 1500 polling stations located across all of Ghana drawn from 40,976  polling stations in every region and every constituency of the country. It is important to stress that PVT relies on a sample, whereas the results collated by EMB are the complete census of all votes cast.

Some critics point out the fact that PVT may be susceptible to sampling errors and reliance on observer integrity. It is an expensive, resource-intensive process, and there is a potential for misuse of results since its findings can be misinterpreted or misrepresented by stakeholders, leading to misinformation or disputes.

Lastly, it may risk undermining official authorities since PVT may be perceived as challenging the legitimacy of the Election Management Body, potentially creating conflict.

Political parties 

Another key stakeholder in the electoral process is political parties; in the past, during election results disputes, some political parties could not come to the table with evidence to buttress their arguments about election results integrity.

Today, most political parties have implemented an elaborate digital system that enables them to collate election results from polling stations and transmit them to the political constituencies' collation centres and, thereafter, to the political party's national collation centres.

These political parties deploy several tools, such as, SMS, WhatsApp, results collation software, and mobile apps combined with a large army of volunteers to ensure they can transmit results in a timely manner to the political party national collation centres. 

Media

The media is vital for providing information about the electoral process, including election results, with breaking news as a key motivator. Therefore, most media are in the race to announce provisional results as they trickle in; they do this through a network of correspondents and reliance on citizen journalists and volunteers.

These results are usually transmitted to the media house using phone calls, SMS, or WhatsApp since it enables them to share pictures of the results declaration slips.  Some media houses with results have put in place a sophisticated digital system to collate and transmit results to the media house results collation Centre, enabling them to call the results of elections even ahead of the EMB.

In conclusion, the declaration of election results can become a contentious issue during closely contested elections.

Given the potential for disputes and possible violence stemming from result declarations, it is crucial for all electoral stakeholders, namely the legally mandated body; Elections Commission, civil society, the media and security forces, to actively contribute to creating an environment that ensures the election outcomes are credible and widely accepted by all.

The writer is a Technology Innovations Consultant.
E-mail:  Kwami@mangokope.com