The African Electoral Institute (AEI) has read the EC’S statement that all discrepancies in the voter register have been largely resolved and will be exhibited online and that the exhibition of the provisional voters’ register online is part of the process to identify and correct errors identified by stakeholders.
The African Electoral Institute’s
concern about the EC’S intent to exhibit the voters’ register online
highlights the digital divide and potential exclusion of marginalized communities from the electoral process by the use of an online exhibition by the Electoral Commission of Ghana.
The African Electoral Institute’s key Concerns with the online exhibition of the voters register are;
1. Digital accessibility by the rural communities without the internet or smartphones who will face challenges accessing the online exhibition. This will lead to the *exclusion* of the rural and marginalised communities and ultimately disenfranchising many electorates.
2. The discrepancies which are enumerated by stakeholders and which the EC asserts have been largely resolved, may not be verifiable or will be difficult to verify by these stakeholders if an online exhibition is used thereby eroding the element of transparency which is important in an electoral process.
In conclusion, the African Electoral Institute’s call underscores the need for *inclusive and transparent* electoral processes that will cater to the diverse electorates on the Ghanaian voters register who are educated, illiterate,rural and urban, because Ghana’s electoral process is not electronic, it is manual therefore, a manual exhibition should be employed with the use of electronic platforms as a backup.
SIGNED
*Joshua Adjin-Adjin Tettey*
*Director of Communications and External Relations*
0540904550
*Ex. WO Alhaji Yussif Mahamah*
*Electoral Security Department*
0243311965
*Engr. Judge Hasford Quartey*
*Deputy Director of Communications and External Relations.*
0547510174
*About Us:*
African Electoral Institute ( AEI) is a Civil Society Organisation (CSO) founded to deliver sustainable electoral solutions to Emerging and Developed Democracies to strengthen, augment, and build electoral stakeholders capacity and participation on electoral issues through electoral education on voter’s rights and freedom, electoral research, election monitoring, election observation, election results collation, election security awareness and training of polling agents and elections directors underscoring the fact that “elections are won at the polling stations’’ and the participation of all identifiable electoral stakeholders in an electoral process such as Political Parties, Governmental Institutions, underpinning transparency and accountability for a free, fair, and credible elections in Africa and the wider world.
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