... EC says could undermine register’s integrity
The Electoral Commission (EC) has urged all political parties to cooperate with the Commission to administer the electoral process, including the ongoing voter registration exercise, without undue interference.
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The Commission said it had the mandate to conduct elections independently, and had demonstrated its capacity to do so effectively and impartially.
The EC said this in a statement issued and signed by the acting Director, Public Affairs of the Commission, Michael Boadu, in reaction to a request by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to release the serial numbers of the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) kits which have been currently deployed in the field for the ongoing limited voters registration exercise.
The Commission, in the statement, listed a number of reasons, including security risk, to decline the request by the NDC. “The Commission wishes to highlight that the integrity and security of our electoral processes are paramount. Each BVR kit, as a critical component of this process, is assigned a unique serial number.
This number plays a crucial role in the operation of these devices, particularly in the generation of activation codes essential for their functionality as well as tracking their location and movement, it said
Risk
“Releasing these serial numbers to any external party, including political entities, poses a substantial risk to the security and integrity of our registration processes. That is why this has never been done since biometric voting system was introduced in Ghana,” it emphasised.
These measures, the Commission said, underscore the transparency of the ongoing limited voters registration exercise. “The Electoral Commission has nothing to hide. It is important to note that the demand for serial numbers of BVRs, if granted, could pose major risks to the security and integrity of our electoral system and operations.
Prevention of such risks by declining this request, far outweighs any concerns and interests of individual stakeholders,” it said. “Given the above potential risks that disclosing serial numbers of BVR kits could pose, it is pertinent for stakeholders to address their minds to Section 7, Subsection I G) of the Right to Information Act, 2019 (Act 989), which provides in part as follows:
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"Information is exempt from disclosure where the information contains matters which if disclosed can reasonably be expected to ... endanger ... a system, including computer and communication system,s for which security is reasonably required.
“While disclosure of serial numbers of BVRs has never been done, it is essential for the general public to recognise the following measures of transparency and accountability that characterise our registration process and which are enshrined in law,” it said.
Measures
These, the commission said, included the gazetting of registration centres, which all political parties and other stakeholders have access to , adding that there could be no voter registration data added to the voters register from any location that was not on the list of gazetted registration centres.
Additionally, it said political parties had polling agents present at all registration centres ensuring direct oversight of the registration processes while the EC had provided “start-of-day” and “end-of-day” reports detailing the number of persons registered at each registration centre.
Also, political parties were given copies of the provisional register prior to the voters register exhibition to enable them to scrutinise the provisional register to identify any issue that they wanted to raise during the exhibition. They were also served with copies of the final register to raise any issue they have with the commission.