Former chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC), Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyan, has disclosed that collation centres have proven to be the most vulnerable points in manipulating election results in recent times.

According to him, each collation centre represents a point where results can be corrupted, willfully or through mistakes. Also, he noted that the more collating points there are in the collation management process, the more difficult it is to track changes and results.

“The most important activity in the post-election phase is the tabulation or collation of votes obtained by candidates who contested the election. This activity as at now, is heavily human-driven and requires only rudimentary technologies for accurately adding up figures, and where applicable, transmitting the results. So, vote tabulation sounds like a simple and straightforward activity. However, examples from recent would indicate that collation centres are the most vulnerable points in manipulating election results. So, it is not desirable to setup many collation points in the result management process.”
Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyan

Speaking at the University of Ghana roundtable discussion on use of electronic technology as the keynote speaker, today, June 15, 2023, Dr Afari-Gyan stated that in any case, in recent times, a lot of controversies over election results have arisen over votes tabulation.

This, he highlighted, is true of Nigeria’s elections a few months back, with the most bizarre example of vote tabulation anomaly and intrigues occuring in 2020 elections in Guyana, a Commonwealth country in South America.

“Because of the spate of controversies over the vote tabulations and the attendant resort to court intervention, it took five months from the day elections were held before the final results could be declared.”
Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyan

Touching on the core technology needed in elections, Dr Afari-Gyan stated that the most compelling need for technology in the pre-election phase, is to be able to accurately capture the unique physical features, along with the demographic data for persons being registered to vote. This information, he explained, helps to prevent multiple registration, multiple voting and impersonation, thereby mitigating incidence of voter fraud.

“On election day, ideally, technology should make it possible to achieve three purposes. To use data collected during registration to confirm that a prospective voter is the same person who registered to vote. To keep a record of the time each voter was verified to vote and to send results to tabulation centres in real time.”
Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyan

Dangers of social media in elections

In the area of social media, the former chairman of EC stated that political parties have used it overtime to communicate to voters, likewise the electoral commission. However, he noted that from the way it has been used and the irresponsible use of social media far outweighs the responsible use of the platform.

“It is fast becoming a ready platform for basic misinformation and creating troubles. So, social media as a form of technology has the potential to be good and bad.”
Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyan

Furthermore, Dr Afari-Gyan highlighted that the fact that election results can be manipulated would indicate that as Ghana seeks to improve the use of technology in elections, it must at the same time also find ways to improve the human factor. The ways to achieve this, he revealed, includes building integrity in the electoral system itself, such that mistakes can be readily identified and traced to the sources where they occurred and clearly specifying the method and distinct steps for carrying out important tasks like votes tabulations.

“Because technology is being used for multiple purposes in elections, some people are speaking in terms of technology driven election, I prefer to speak in terms of technology-assisted elections because I don’t think that the use of technology could ever supplant humans. After all, it is election administrators and key stakeholders who decide what they want election technology to do. It is election workers who use technology and widespread human errors in the use of technology may be fatal to an election. So, the knowledge that election workers get from training and their integrity as persons do matter in complementing what technology can do.”
Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyan