EC set to throw away 2,000 election devices bought in 2018 – IMANI ‘exposes voter register lies’

The Electoral Commission’s justification for the procurement of new election management equipment has been described by IMANI Africa as lies, as it presents fresh evidence to contradict the commission’s position. 

“Almost every single thing they have said on this matter is a palpable lie,” the policy think-tank’s Vice-President Bright Simons had a fresh go at the Commission over its “unnecessary” and ‘wasteful’ exercise to compile a new register.

The EC has said scrapping the entire Biometric Voter Management System with a fresh replacement would save the taxpayer $38 million.

A refurbishment of the equipment bought in 2011 would cost $74 million but a completely new system would cost $56 million.

But a heavily gesticulating at a press conference Tuesday, Bright Simons said as recent as 2018, the EC had procured at least 2,000 components of the biometric registration and management system.

“How can you after having done that come out and say the system is so old because the whole system is based on 2011?” he said, as he demanded answers.

The globally-acclaimed tech innovator referred to documents from the Ministry of Finance and accounts audited by the Auditor-General which, he said, showed that some $40million had been spent on these equipment since 2016.

“One of them must be lying, the Ministry of Finance or the Electoral Commission. Someone is lying to Ghanaians,” Mr. Simons said and found no difficulty in concluding, the EC is more liable to lies.

He also castigated MPs, especially those on the Special Budget Committee, who are privy to these purchases but still defended the EC’s plan to buy more than 5,000 brand new laptops, scanners, printers and biometric devices to set up a fresh election management database.

“The simple conclusion is that, since 2011, it is a lie that we have not bought any new equipment and everything states back to 2011…. “

“….from the parliamentary record, we see almost $80 million since then, buying new things, refurbishing old things.

“…so if we have to do anything, we just have to do a few more repairs, a little more maintenance, maybe buy a few 200 here, 300 there etc, etc and it will not get you to the $74 million that they told you, you need…”

IMANI African has estimated it would not cost more than $15 million to do all this. He questioned the sense of priority of Ghana’s national leaders to buy several thousands of voter registration equipment.

Ghana has no more than 150 dialysis machines to help treat persons with kidney failure, he contrasted. 

Biometric procurement: EC has selected company that paid bribes to Jacob Zuma – IMANI

The IMANI Vice-President also pointed out some risks in rolling out a new voter registration system. He said observer data reports showed that the EC recorded a 33% of polling stations had problems after it installed a fresh system for the 2012 elections.

“In some situations, it was so bad we postponed the elections for one more day…because it was a brand-new system,” he said.

In 2016, such problems dropped to 7% and later 5% in the 2019 district level elections, he said.

The EC is set to lose the knowledge gained in operating the existing system in exchange for a ‘risky’ restart of a new system.