Thursday, 10 October

Dec 7 polls: NDC wants online, offline re-exhibition of 'corrected' PVR, audit of EC's IT system

Politics
NDC General Secretary Fifi Fiavi Kwetey

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has reacted to “matters arising from the Special Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) Meeting held today, Tuesday, 1st October 2024”.

The IPAC Meeting was “to deliberate on the 2024 Provisional Voters Register,” the NDC noted.

In a press statement signed by the John Dramani Mahama-led party’s General Secretary Fifi Fiavi Kwetey, the NDC said it saw it fit to underline some “significant admissions by the Electoral Commission of Ghana”.

The outlined admissions were five:

1. Illegal transfer of voters due to the lack of a liveliness test technology, as occured in Pusiga and other Constituencies,

2. Erroneous addition of previous transfers to the current 2024 transfer list?

3. Presence of corrupted files in the 2024 Provisional Voters’ Register, which the Commission claims have been rectified and restored,

4. Deleted voters who the Commission wishes to place on a Missing Voters register, and

5. A vulnerable EC IT system that is susceptible to data manipulation and infiltration from officials and non-officials of the Electoral Commission who have access to login credentials.

The October 1 statement by the NDC said, its Functional Executive Committee (FEC) had “deliberated and decided to accept the EC’s promise to release to political parties, the corrected/updated version of the 2024 Provisional Voters Register for scrutiny within one week”.

“FEC further welcomes the decision by the Electoral Commission to re-exhibit the updated Provisional Voters’ Register. We, however, recommend that the re-exhibition exercise should be conducted online and offline at the exhibition centres,” the NDC added.

“The NDC demands a multi-stakeholder and interparty examination of the IT system of the Electoral Commission with the aim of addressing the vulnerabilities that the EC itself has admitted to, which vulnerabilities led to several of the anomalies we have raised,” the statement, also, said.

“Clearly, the vulnerabilities in the IT system of the Electoral Commission can be exploited by criminals to compromise the integrity of the December 07, 2024 elections if not addressed,” the NDC argued in conclusion.

Source: classfmonline.com/Prince Benjamin