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An independent presidential candidate in the 2012 election, Jacob Osei Yeboah (JOY 2012) has called for a lasting solution to address the problems associated with the credibility of the current voters register.

He called on all stakeholders, including the Electoral Commission, and all political parties not to work to derail efforts at fostering unity within the democratic state.

Speaking on the need for an imminent and efficient way of cleaning the voters register, JOY2012 underscored the need to develop a National Electronic Data Register (NEDR) after which an overhaul of the National Identification Authority (NIA) can be effected to help the country attain a credible biometric voters’ register (BVR) for the 2016 polls.

Jacob Osei Yeboah, stated also that the controversies on the 2012 Biometric voter register is a proof that, though it was the first experience in the nation’s electoral processes, the current register dabbles in “Mediocrity.”

“The capturing of the bio data of the citizenry was erroneous for the purposes of election due to non-existent Data Infrastructure. How can we even imagine that our development Partners, especially, Germany will be interested in re-sponsoring mediocrity,” he quizzed.

In an interview with Peacefmonline.com JOY2012 further said “The call by IDEG and CFI for a taskforce to access the accuracy of existing BVR suffers the efforts of stillbirth. The 2012 BVR is not maintainable and cannot be relevant for 2016 election as the dead alone can inflate the figures. There is no way to verify the accuracy of a data except recreating a new BVR, since Ghana does not have a base or reference data such as NEDR”

Joy2012 however counseled that Ghana will be ready for “Smart Voting” when the NEDI is established – “Smart voting will eliminate spoilt ballot, a phenomenon of another wasteful venture in our electoral process”

There have been many calls from political and non-partisan groups for a new or an early cleansing of the voters register for the 2016 elections.

This call is predicated on the Supreme Court’s ruling on the 2012 election petition. It has further emerged that the existing voters register has allowed carriers of the NHIS card among others to register but was later annulled by the Supreme Court. These examples raise issues of credibility and trust of the process and, thus, a national discourse is needed to agree on a common solution before the 2016 election.

However, the 2012 independent presidential candidate reiterated that the solution to that was t – “Develop a National Electronic Data Register (NEDR) which tracked a person’s life cycle through birth, education, religion, profession, business, property and death.”

He said the EC, NIA, Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD), National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), Birth and Death Registry were key ministries that could also benefit from NEDR as a planning tool.

“The EC would only need to access such a register which can extrapolate the population that would be eighteen (18) years and above in each polling station and plan budgetary and logistical allocations for each election”, he stated.

This, according to Jacob Osei Yeboah could prevent perpetual pitfalls during registrations by the EC for subsequent election years - “Opening and closing the voters register seems like the norm, but it is archaic and hugely wasteful”

JOY stated that the method of data capturing by EC is erroneous, and like all electronic input, garbage in garbage out philosophy holds – “Once voters Bio Identity are not tagged to their residential addresses, the said problem raised by NPP cannot be eliminated. The nation would then have to live with creating new voter registers every election years. This is not acceptable.”

He told Peacfmonline.com that – “Since the voters’ register is not maintainable, those who passed-on, in the course of the years will still have their names in the voters’ register. This will always require human manual deletion and defeats the benefit of high cost for Biometric voter’ register. The dead can always bloat the register.”

JOY asserted that, a technology used by the Germans will ensure that each person’s identity is tagged to a residence within the country with or without street addresses and so eliminate perpetual error in the register.

“Ghana will be better off financially, if the current voter register is maintained and very high vigilance and policing is employed on all polling stations, if renewed voter register cannot eliminate the existing identified errors. There is therefore no need to put pressure on the EC to undertake this all important milestone project for voters’ register alone, thereby not meaningfully utilizing tax payers money whether in Ghana or from development partners” he noted

The only Independent Presidential Candidate in 2012 elections therefore sees the pressure on EC rather – “misplaced and displaced. We must rather put the pressure on the government to undertake the time-limited NEDI project within 12-14months before 2016 general elections. The country will be ready for Smart Voting”