Ghana’s voters’ register has been described as an outmoded register that needs to be changed.
According to the National Democratic Party (NDP) “at this age and time, our voters register is not only compromised but also outmoded, when there has been a global switch from this anachronism to electronic voting machine with the only requirement of a single definite voter identity.”
[contextly_sidebar id=”XKYuQk3OpX92xGbuoxv2amH3BzJbxb5z”]Speaking at a Forum on the voters’ register on Friday, Acting General Secretary of NDP, Mohammed Frimpong, noted that India has adopted a cost-effective and robust Electronic Voter Machine (EVM) in their elections.
He said the EVM has made elections in India credible adding that “their [Indian’s] idle EVM can be borrowed for the 2016 elections.”
“Our south-south neighbors, that is India, has since 1988 begun a switch to Electronic Voter Machines (EVM) and perfected this in 2014 general elections with highly unprecedented electoral efficiency. The Indian EVMs’ are one tenth of the cost of those used in the USA and elsewhere but full-proofed, very robust, battery operated and deployed all over the stretch of the Indian sub-continent. By the Indian experience, Ghana’s electoral controversies are just a drop in an ocean but the EVMs have eliminated all that in India,” he explained.
The NDP party had supported calls by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for a new voters’ register for the 2016 general elections.
Mohammed Frimpong had earlier in his presentation suggested that, if the Electoral Commission fails to compile a new voters’ register, then data from the National Identification Authority should be used to sanitize the system.
“The NIA issue must be highly considered in order to purify or sanitize the voters register,” he added.
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By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana