NDC against polls closing at 3 p.m.

Some key electoral reforms proposed by the Electoral Commission (EC) have been rejected by the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

The proposals are changing the closing time of polls from 5 p.m. to 3 p.m. in the 2024 elections, the substitution of periodic mass registration with continuous registration, the introduction of an all-year-round voter exhibition exercise through the use of technology and the restriction of data entry of election results to the constituency collation level and the generation of regional and national reports.

The proposals by the EC, the NDC said, would create needless problems for the electoral system in the country.

Mind boggling

Addressing a press conference on the reform proposals by the EC following a two-day Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) forum in Accra yesterday, the Director of Elections of the NDC, Mr Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, said the proposal to close polls at 3 p.m. would unnecessarily disenfranchise many Ghanaians, especially those living in rural and deprived areas where the people had to travel very long distances to cast their ballots.

“The NDC finds the proposal by the Jean Mensah-led EC to change the closing time of polls from 5 p.m. to 3 p.m. in 2024 baffling and mind-boggling. The current arrangement of closing polls at 5 p.m. has worked perfectly in seven general elections in this country and does not require any fixing,” he stated.

 Creating needless panic

Mr Ankrah said since the 1992 elections, polls had always closed at 5 p.m. and that had worked perfectly without any challenges.

He, therefore, questioned why the EC would want to change that time-tested arrangement and go for a poorly thought-through alternative which was bound to disenfranchise eligible voters and create needless problems for the electoral system.

“This is particularly so, given the undue delay we usually record in the delivery of electoral materials to some polling stations and other technical challenges that usually characterise voting in this country.

“Even with 5 p.m., there are instances in some parts of the country that because materials did not arrive early and machines consistently got spoilt, voting continued beyond 5 p.m.,” he said.

“Now you want to close at 3 p.m.

Ghana is not Accra and Kumasi. In some of the rural areas, poor farmers would have to go to the farm to get their daily bread before they come to vote. So you create a situation where there will be unnecessary panic and confusion,” he added.

 Hasty decision

Mr Ankrah recalled how the EC made a similar hasty decision to declare results within 24 hours after closure of polls in the 2020 elections but failed miserably.

That decision, he said, led to the rushed declaration of patently flawed results that yielded a percentage aggregate of more than 100 per cent by the Returning Officer, Mrs Mensah.

Mr Ankrah added that one would have thought that the EC Chairperson would have learnt the right lessons by now, but that appeared not to be the case.

 Continuous mass registration

On the proposal by the EC to undertake all-year-round continuous registration of eligible voters, he reminded the election management body that it was not new and that the law required the commission to put in place mechanisms to ensure that any time that citizens became eligible to vote, they could be registered.

He  said continuous registration could not be a substitute for periodic nationwide registration because the all-year-round registration could only be done at the district offices of the EC, meaning that eligible voters might have to travel several kilometres to district offices to register, and not everyone could do that.

“It will, therefore, be ludicrous for the EC to suggest that political parties should employ permanent agents at their district offices to observe the registration of eligible voters all-year round,” he said.

 Voter exhibition exercise

Describing the proposal by the EC to have a year-round exhibition as a laudable idea, he, however, said such a move could not be a substitute for the periodic exhibition of the voters register that was normally done after voter registration.

He explained that the voter exhibition exercise was not only intended to afford voters the opportunity to verify and confirm their details but also ensure that ineligible registrants (minors and foreigners) were challenged and removed from the register.

“It will also help clean the names of dead people from the register and afford voters the opportunity to confirm their captured biometric features and this cannot be achieved through the system the EC is proposing,” he said.

 Boycott of IPAC meeting

Mr Ankrah pointed out that the NDC’s decision to boycott IPAC temporarily was due to the “bastardisation of the revered body” by the commissioners of the EC.

 “The current leadership of the EC has turned IPAC from a consultative and consensus-building platform to an information-sharing platform where the EC only comes to impose its decisions on IPAC, without room for meaningful deliberations and exchange of ideas.

“It became so bad to the point that the EC even announced publicly that IPAC had agreed to the decision to compile a new register for the 2020 elections when the issue of a new register had not even been discussed at the said meeting,” he said.

Among others, he said, the non-equitable voting arrangement at IPAC meetings was the reason the NDC took a principled position to boycott IPAC until the right changes were effected to ensure fair and meaningful deliberations at IPAC.

 Proposed reforms

The NDC election director said after a painstaking review of the 2020 elections, the party had come up with preliminary proposals for electoral reforms on which it intended to engage various stakeholders prior to the party rejoining IPAC.

Among the NDC’s proposals are: the participation of IPAC and its advisory role in the electoral process should be given legal backing, without encroaching on the constitutional independence of the EC, that the EC adopts an equitable voting formula for political parties in IPAC deliberations based on their representation in Parliament, the EC complies with the use of the legally prescribed statement of Poll/Pink Sheet (Form 8A & 8B) provided for in Election Regulations to prevent the omission of biometric voter registration and voter identification (BVD) entries to preserve the ballot accounting process and make it possible to check multiple voting, ballot stuffing, impersonation and other forms of rigging, the high rate of rejected ballots recorded in the 2020 general election be addressed through the use of the appropriate ink pads, and that same should be stipulated in our election regulations.