10 issues the NPP raised at IPAC over voters register brouhaha

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has maintained its long-held position that there are issues with the current biometric voters’ register and hence the need for a new register to be compiled.

In 2012, the NPP had demanded a new register in the build-up to the 2016 general elections and this eventually led to the commission of a special panel chaired by his Lordship VCRAC Crabbe in October 2015.

The committee task was to come up with recommendations for the voters’ register.

Based on the committee’s recommendation, the signal is that the system is not effective in achieving the set goals of eliminating invalid records from the Register and must be reconsidered.

The NPP in its presentation at a dialogue between the Eminent Advisory Committee and the EC outlined 10 underlying premises for demanding a new register.

Much of its argument is grounded in the VCRAC Crabbe’s report.

Read below 10 key issues they raised at the IPAC meeting

1. The NPP argues that it will be imprudent and unwise to want to continue spending on refurbishing the system as compared to acquiring an entirely new system, what will you do? Which reasonable man will ignore such advice and continue to spend on a system that had clearly become obsolete and out of date when he could use a much lesser amount to acquire a brand-new system that is robust, modern and durable user-friendly with full functionality and warranties?

 

2. According to the NPP, it has always been the practice over the years for the EC to replace the voters register after every 8 years

 

3. The current Biometric Verification Device (BVD) is unable to verify a number of voters electronically resulting in a high number of manual verification on voting day, which is largely unreliable and a potential source of dispute as it tends to compromise the integrity of the elections.

 

4. The current Biometric Voter Device (BVDs) and the Biometric Voters Register Kits (BVRs) that the Commission uses are often challenged due to their inability to do fingerprint verification, a significant number of these devices can also not be repaired.

 

5. The current biometric architecture does not have a facial recognition technology nor does it allow for a facial recognition add-on to be added. The new Biometric Voter Management Solution that the EC intends to acquire ahead of the 2020 elections will have a facial recognition as an additional feature for those whose fingers cannot be verified and thus reduce the high incidence of manual verification which often proves to be problematic and tends to compromise the integrity and credibility of our elections.

 

6. The new biometric system will also significantly reduce if not completely eliminate the increasingly high identification failure rate by using new scanners and software with improved fingerprint capturing algorithms and the use of certified fingerprint image quality assessment software to ensure image quality.

 

7. The current system of identification did not allow for easy detection of the ineligible registrants particularly minors and foreigners.

 

8. The biometric voter registration system could only detect and eliminate duplicate records from multiple registrations of individuals.

 

9. The register of voters contains a substantial number of people whose names are currently not valid Based on the 2012 projected population of Ghana, provided by the Ghana Statistical Service, and discounting the population of foreigners.

 

10. On the issue of dead people in the register, it argued that based on the committee’s findings, as many as 580,000 estimated number of voter deaths would have occurred cumulatively by the 2016 elections and may well remain in the Register of Voters.