The Danquah Institute, with support from other civil society groups, Development Partners and the Electoral Commission of Ghana, will on Monday, organise a 2-day seminar to interrogate the viability of Electronic Voting and the challenges and advantages of a biometric voter register in Ghana for the 2012 general elections and beyond. It will be the first of Danquah Institute’s Annual Governance & Development Dialogue Series.

The two-day conference takes place at the Alisa Hotels, North Ridge, Accra, Ghana, on Feb 8-9, 2010. The first day will be devoted to Biometric Voter Registration; with Day 2 probing the question whether or not e-voting could work in Ghana and if so which model(s) would suit our environment.

While, the Electoral Commission has began with work on the processes leading to a compilation of a new voter register using biometric technology, “We fear that challenges with time, logistics, funds and unresolved issues about cross-sector coordination may still frustrate the implementation process”, observes Prof Yaw Twumasi, a member of the governing board of the Danquah Institute. The conference would offer a common public platform for the various stakeholders, including the voting public, to consider all these issues.

The conference will be chaired by Prof Ken Attafuah.

The fundamental question to be addressed at the seminar is how to protect the integrity of Ghana's future elections from the point of voter registration to the moment of winner certification?

The Danquah Institute believes that as a nation, we cannot dismiss without the benefit of a full domestic enquiry the viability of electronic voting and if we are to do so then it has to be now in order to allow the nation the time and space to make the necessary preparation for future elections.

Experiences elsewhere, from Asia to the Americas, have shown that countries take the e-voting way by first undertaking a pilot project at the local authority elections level. The conference will explore this option, along with its related costs and acceptability matters.

Speakers and participants will include the Chairman of the EC, leaders of political parties, experts in election automated technology, the Executive Director of the National Identification Authority and others.

Ghanaians witnessed how the 2008 general elections got nearly marred by a bloated voter register which helped to fuel charges of vote rigging and increased opportunities for electoral violence and vote rigging.

For Ghana, the introduction of election automated technology could be the defence weapon against, not only systemic electoral fraud, but also the explosion of electoral violence in the future, which, if not checked, could ultimately deal a fatal blow to the entire democratic experiment here in Ghana and with serious continental consequences.

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