EC to upload voters register on Google Drive again

The Electoral Commission (EC) of Ghana has served notice that it will publish the voter's register again on Google Drive.

Chair of the EC, Jean Mensah said at a press conference in Accra on Tuesday, November 24 that the register which was published online was pulled down for some modification to be done on the website.

Justifying the publication of the registers on the web page, Mrs. Jean Mensah said “We are enjoined by CI127 to publish the register.

“We recognize that it can be more functional and therefore they are working to introduce more functionality into it. I believe in the coming days it will be put out there again.:”

The elections management body said it published the register in the spirit of transparency ahead of the December 7 presidential and parliamentary elections.

The EC published the Special Voting list for individuals who will vote early on Tuesday, December 1 as a result of their duties on Election Day.

The Special Voting covers security personnel, media personnel, and election officials who will be unable to vote at the polling stations where they registered on the day of the general election.

It also captures polling stations across the 16 regions of the country and the ‘Name Reference List’ comes with a warning for individuals to desist from making extracts or copies without written permission from the EC.

The EC also hosted the voter register of over 17 million names on Google Drive despite being removed a few days later.

The publication has been met with mixed reaction from a section of the Ghanaian public with critics saying the EC breached the privacy law.

An IT Security Consultant, Prince Kpasra, says the Electoral Commission (EC) has become complicit after publishing the names of voters on a Google Drive but later removed.

But Madam Jean Mensa responding to this said: “We are enjoined by law to publish the voter's register. Indeed, the CI 127 requires that the final register is published in a manner in which the Commission deems fit.

“We are well aware that the ID cards had come to be used for other activities but for the Commission’s point of view that card is provided for voting purposes only. In this era of transparency and openness, the Commission believes that it is important to publish the register.”