Smoke and mirrors: A case of election rigging in Ghana

Since 2000, elections in Ghana have been venerated by observers both internally and externally as being? free and fair? The losing political party, however, has consistently contested the election results in court. After the 2004 presidential election, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) members challenged the results announced by the Electoral Commission (EC), suing the EC to publish detailed data from the election.

Similarly, at the end of the closely contested 2008 presidential election and the subsequent run-off, leading NDC members accused the EC of trying to manipulate results, and their frustrated supporters invaded the EC head office in Accra. When the NDC was eventually declared the winner, the incumbent New Patriotic Party (NPP) accused the NDC of rigging the election. (Gyimah-Boadi Journal of democracy 2009).

(Gyimah-Boadi Journal of democracy 2009)

In the aftermath of the 2012 presidential election, the opposition NPP accused the winner John Dramani Mahama and the NDC of rigging the election, boycotted the inauguration of the president, and asked the Supreme Court to overturn the official results declared by the EC. There is widely view of voting rigging in our part of the country, people see voting rigging as part of our modern-day elections and politics. People think that before you can win election in our modern-day politics it either you buy a vote or rig the election.

In 1992 election where the opposition party accused the electoral commission for electoral fraud in the presidential election and that led to the boycott of the parliamentary election. The declaration by the Commonwealth Observer team was made at noon even before the voting was over. It appeared the Observers team was in a hurry to enthrone Rawlings as a civilian Head of State to avoid a potentially looming crisis.

The maturity of the political opposition was manifested and instead of embarking on actions that would have thrown the country into chaos and given room for a state of emergency or create an avenue for the military to stage a hasty comeback, the New Patriotic Party led by the late Professor Albert Adu-Boahen rater recounted the flaws of the 1992 elections into a report titled “The Stolen Verdict: Ghana’s November 1992 Presidential Election.”(Boafo-Arthur K (2006).voting for democracy in Ghana).

Election rigging, involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favoured candidate, depressing the vote share of rival candidates. From my point of view, voting rigging or election fraud should not be entertained in our country since that can cause tension on the society.

The influence of our political party on the electoral commission have been the major problem in our electoral process. It's as though every opposition party has an issue of doubt in the manner of elections and even on the build-up to elections. These could be seen in the number of press conferences demonstrating their anger in the conduct voter registration exercise and exhibitions but that should not give room for election fraud.

In 2015, a group of people called the Alliance for Accountable Governance, Let My Vote Count Alliance and the NPP were in demonstration to demand the creation of a new voters register as they alleged the old register is bloated. 2020 the NDC's Sammy Gyamfi also alleged the use of extra forces by some military and police personnel and alleged NPP vagilities at some registration centres in the country but the EC went ahead claiming the registration process was peaceful.

From other perceptive the use of the biometric in our electoral system cause chaos.in 2012, biometric verification devices failed to identify individuals? thumbprints, and some biometric verification machines failed entirely, ). Breakdowns appear to be caused by battery overheating and exhaustion, and when battery replacement was attempted, the machines froze up, sometimes for several hours The Electoral Commission mandated that no one would be allowed to vote without their identity being verified biometrically.

Forthrightly, no individual nor political party will sit for his adversary to cheat in an election, and also there’s no election without challenges. That notwithstanding, political parties shouldn’t infer their party faithful to practice muddled deeds though they are aware of obstinacy of the game.

Unlike football that has three consequences, elections have two either a victor or Vanquished, just as a victor sees that as a prospect to jubilate a vanquished should clutch that to learn from his or her mistake as well.it is in that regard that, the idea of vote-rigging in national elections has to be erased. The only way our politicians will accept defeat to prevent loss of life and properties.