Technical glitches tarnish Ghanaian presidential elections

Biometric authentication has been implemented in Ghanaian elections. Photo: The Iconoclast News

The adoption of electoral technology by itself is no guarantee that an election will be carried out efficiently. After all, the process must be done by a competent entity that can ensure reliable results. Ghana took a great leap towards the modernization of its elections by implementing biometric authentication at the polling centers, but its poor management and other aspects of the electoral process have practically voided the benefits of the new measure.

On February 15th, 2012, Africa’s Electoral Commissioner, Dr. Gwadwo Afari-Gyan, announced that Ghana’s 2012 elections would feature the use of biometric authentication to identify voters at the polling station. The process used was somewhat rudimentary compared to what countries like Venezuela have experienced with the Integrated Authentication System, but it included fingerprint scans of all ten digits, in this case. A digital picture of the voter was also taken and printed on his or her voting card.

Theoretically, this should have ensured a fair exercise of democracy, and even though it did stop some attempts of double registration in different districts, the lack of public order entailed certain difficulties. Two verification machines were stolen in the city of Tamale, and ‘macho men’ —heavy, muscular individuals used by political parties to disrupt elections— set ballot papers, coalition sheets and verification machines on fire in Ablekuma. Besides, the Ghanaian Electoral Commission (EC) was accused of hiring an Israeli company to transmit election results. Dr. Afari-Gyan assured the public that all scrutiny and transmission processes are being carried out exclusively by members of the EC. His intervention inadvertently revealed another faulty aspect of Ghanaian elections: in spite of the implementation of biometric authentication, voting in Ghana is still being done manually, and results from each polling place are transmitted via fax to the central authorities. Unsurprisingly, numerous technical glitches led to long delays and extensions in the electoral event.

As of December 9, no definite winner had been declared yet. This is because technical snags in the biometric data verification equipment were so widespread that they hindered the whole democratic process, proving how improvisation can do more harm than good.

Ghana took a sensible step toward the improvement of its elections, but good intentions are not enough. The African country needs to rethink the way it protects its democracy, as electoral technology needs to be provided by a serious provider that can guarantee that its technological equipment will not become an obstacle to suffrage. The government also needs to double its efforts to warrant security and order at all electoral events.

“We have to fix that”

Long lines at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library
on Election Day in Washington, DC (Getty Images)

During his acceptance speech on early Wednesday morning, reelected President Barack Obama addressed the need to fix the US electoral system. Speaking before a crowd of cheerful supporters, he said "I want to thank every American who participated in this election, whether you voted for the very first time, or waited in line for a very long time, by the way, we have to fix that."

Although this was probably one of the few times the electoral system has been part of an acceptance speech, the problems encountered are not new. Since the Butterfly Ballot scandal in 2000, hundreds of incidents have been reported by authorities of all levels, election watchdog groups, media and citizens.

These elections were marred by long lines across the country, but especially in Florida, Ohio and Virginia. Poorly trained election officials were misguiding voters in relation to ID requirements to vote. Deficient voting machines, like the one caught on a video in Pennsylvania giving Romney votes cast for Obama, also made the voting experience cumbersome.

Although President Obama’s intent is quite plausible, the road in which he is about to embark might turn bumpier than expected. HAVA, the Electoral Assistance Commission, Universities across the nation, ONG’s, have all made considerable efforts to improve the US electoral system, yet they have been unsuccessful confronting the conflict of interests that exist between States and the Federal Government, and the inconvenient level of partisanship that electoral bodies have shown across the nation.

In a recent interview by Rachel Maddow, Rick Hasen, Professor of Law and Political Science at UC Irvine, and author of "The Voting Wars," made it quite clear. Although the constitution provides the mechanisms to create a national authority to advance the reforms needed, the political will from all stakeholders to produce such transformation is still missing.

Rachel Maddow articulately stated “voting is a Federal issue, with federal laws to protect it…. Elections are a state affair”. Congress has on its hand the possibility to transform the system, however, letting congress, or any other institution conduct elections, would mean letting go some power and attributions the States hold at the moment. Looking at recent history, both parties have been imposing over the population all kinds of laws and regulations to affect the voter base of the other party. It is part of the Voting War Hasen mentions in his book. For example, and according to Professor Hasen, long lines were a deliberate effort by Republicans to depressing democratic turnout. By cutting back on the number of days and hours early voting was available, Republicans were, allegedly, hurting democratic votes.

In Florida, Republican Governor Rick Scott, signed a law shortening the number of days for early voting to eight from 14. This was one of the main reasons it took Floridians so long to vote and to obtain results.

If Obama is to take Mr. Hasen’s recommendation, he has to create the political momentum to have Congress assume the authority granted by the constitution to set rules for congressional elections. Then, he could proceed to ask States to follow the path of Congress.

In spite of the threat posed by a possible fiscal meltdown, a nationwide debate on the healthcare reform, and a lagging economy, Obama must find the time and energy to impose the political agenda needed to fix the electoral system, if the US is to continue showcasing its democracy as an example to follow.

Pre-electoral audits, a missing piece in the integrity of the US election system

Source: NorthJersey.com

The 2000 elections were a turning point in the way elections are administered in the US. After the contested race between Al Gore and George W. Bush had to be decided by the US Supreme Court almost a month after Election Day, numerous initiatives such as the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), the creation of the Electoral Assistance Commission, and the proliferation of watchdog and electoral transparency groups, dramatically improved the electoral landscape of the US.

In spite the progress, there is still room for improvement. Audits, a crucial step to certify the correctness of election outcomes, are still scarce and do not cover, in most cases, the electoral process in its entirety.  

At the moment, audits standards and procedures refer mostly to the process of hand-counting a sufficiently large random sample of the cast paper ballots and contrasting it with the digital record electronic voting machines provide. Although post-electoral audits are important, instead of focusing only in detecting fraud, a greater emphasis should be placed on preventing malfeasance of any kind of error from happening.

According to Verified Voting, the most important benefits of a thorough audit processes are:

• Revealing when recounts are necessary to verify election outcomes.
• Finding error whether accidental or intention.
• Deterring fraud.
• Providing for continuous improvement in the conduct of elections.
• Promoting public confidence in elections.

Voting technologies, which continues to gain popularity across the 3,600 jurisdictions of the US, provide numerous opportunities to review the components of the voting systems, and guarantee that the outcome of the electoral processes exactly reflect the will of voters. Those opportunities should be exploited. From the configuration of the electoral roll and electronic pollbooks, passing through the creation of voting instruments, source code of voting machines, and post electoral audit, every step of the election should be audited.

During the 2012 general elections, more than half of the states conducted post-election audits, however, authorities have not agreed on how to enforce pre-electoral audits. The focus of authorities has been on certifying that the technology in use complies with the minimum standards, but little or no attention has been given to each election and especially to the numerous steps of the electoral cycle preceding the event.

As voting technologies continue to spread around the world, a considerable body of knowledge is being developed. The US should take advantage of this by sharing experiences with Brazil, Belgium, the Philippines, Venezuela or Estonia, and every other nation trying to improve election administration through the adoption of technological solutions. Venezuela stands out as an example of what can be done in terms of pre-electoral audits. In a recent article published, available at forbes.com, Eugenio Martinez (a seasoned Venezuelan reporter) points out that for the Presidential Elections in Venezuela, before Election Day, more than 17 audits were performed to certify all elements of the voting platform worked properly. This was one of the main reasons why a contested election, in the midst of a heated campaign and a highly polarized political environment, ended with immediate official results being accepted by all parties minutes after polls closed. Reviewing the Venezuelan voting platform and developing ties with Venezuelan electoral authorities and its technology provider Smartmatic could be a great start. The US cannot afford another electoral meltdown as it has all the means to avoid it.

The 2012 US general elections, a historic view

This marked the 57th quadrennial presidential election for the United States
Doug Mills/The New York Times

Yesterday, November 6^th, 2012 Barack Obama became the 15^th US President to be reelected for two consecutive presidential terms. Only Franklin Delano Roosevelt has had more than two terms (1932-1945). 

CNN’s preliminary data shows a turnout of approximately 56% of the voting-age population. Although, this reflects a decrease in relation to the 2008 general elections, the overall trend showing a steady increase prevailed. Two demographic groups that seem to have played an important role in Obama’s favor are young voters and Hispanics. According to the most recent information available, young voters (ages 18-29) and Hispanics increased their participation in 1% as compared to 2008. Obama managed to capture 60% of young voters and 71% of Hispanics this time around. 

Joe Biden was again Obama’s Vice President candidate. From all Presidents US has had since George Washington’s first presidency from 1789 to 1797, 37 were chosen in elections. John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Chester A. Arthur, Andrew Johnson, Calvin Coolidge, Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson and Gerald R. Ford, succeeded incumbent Presidents following their abandonment of office due to illness, death, or in the unique case of Ford, Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal.

According to USA Today, President Obama won by a margin of 97 electoral votes (303 to 206). In 1936, Franklin Roosevelt defeated Alf Landon by the biggest difference ever recorded in a US election, 515 electoral votes. The smallest difference in electoral votes occurred during the 1824 presidential elections in which Andrew Jackson had only 15 electoral votes over his closest contender. The decision was taken into the House of Representatives which decided to appoint John Quincy Adams as President.

In terms of popular votes, President Obama obtained an approximate 2% margin over Mitt Romney. Only 5 presidents have received a greater number of popular votes but lost in electoral colleges. The last one being Al Gore during the 2000 elections. In 1876, Rutherford Hayes defeated Samuel Tilden with a difference in popular vote of 1 vote.

Obama is the 21st Democrat President. Republicans have managed to win the presidency with 22 candidates. Only 4 presidents in the history of the US have lead this nation coming from parties other than the Democratic or Republican parties. It is important to mention that two independent candidates, Angus King and Bernie Sanders, managed to obtain seats in the Senate.

In spite the difficulties presented by Hurricane Sandy in the Northeast Cost, the US managed to pull out another successful election. Mitt Romney, the losing candidate from the Republican Party conceded defeat around 1:30 am on November 7, 2012.

US Election 2012: What’s at stake

The Capitol. Source: FreeDigitalPhotos

The choice of a new president for the US is not just one between two candidates, but one between two different visions of the country. Two visions that point at a bleak outlook. The problems—an almost stagnant economy, high unemployment rates, the deplorable state of the education system, troops still in Afghanistan—are obvious and unavoidable. America is in desperate need for real solutions, and

hopefully whoever gets chosen between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama will provide some, if not all of them. Let’s take a look at the current panorama.

Economy and Unemployment

Americans consider this the main trouble burdening the country. The recession ended in 2009, but the economy does not seem to grow yet, three years later. Total national debt is larger than it has ever been since WWII. Unemployment rates, which are already high, are on the verge of rising even more. Obama intends to keep taxes low for everybody except the wealthiest, give tax breaks to businesses, and spend on public works and clean energy. Romney, on the other side, proposes cuts in tax rates for all income levels and cuts in corporate rates, as well as encouraging oil production.

Education

The U.S. education system is in dire need of a transformation. The quality of primary schooling is not quite up to global standards, with less teachers and larger class sizes. On the other hand, higher education costs are leaving students buried deep in debt, that is, if they are able to afford college at all. State budget cuts have affected the quantity (and quality) of teachers, and are ultimately affecting students. The candidates are using this sensitive issue as a means to set philosophical distance from each other. Obama, for example, mentioned on a speech that he and his wife had only been able to pay off their student loans eight years ago, whereas Romney had advised a high school student in Ohio to borrow money from her parents, ignoring the fact that not all parents actually have that money to lend. It’s up to the government to step up and really help the American youth on their path to a professional career.

War

The increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan has gone on and on for years, and trillions of dollars have been spent to that end. Now, the deployment of American forces in the Asian country has entered a transition phase where power is being handed over to the Afghans, but this transition seems slow. Nevertheless, if everything goes according to plan, the troops should be going home by the end of 2014. Both candidates agree on the timeline proposed for troop withdrawal, although the question about possible future Al-Qaeda attacks still lingers in the air.

With these important points on the table, it is crucial that people register to vote and do so consciously. The winner of this election, no matter if it is Obama or Romney, must earn his post in a fair electoral process. Voting, as the cornerstone of democracy, is the first step towards a brighter future for a country in crisis. It must not be taken lightly.

Electronic voting continues to gain terrain across the Venezuelan political spectrum

Photo by Carlos Hernández

Caracas, Feb. 9, 2012. On Sunday, February 12, 2012, independent leaders and opposition parties grouped in the Coalition for Democratic Unity (Mesa de la Unidad Democrática) will hold open primary elections aimed at defining a single candidate to stand against President Hugo Chavez in the presidential elections scheduled for October 7, 2012. The primaries will also determine the opposition’s representatives to challenge President Chavez’s candidates for different positions at the state and municipal levels in another round of elections to take place in December, 2012.

This democratic feast will set the stage, once again, for Venezuelan opposition to test the robust automated platform that has gained numerous positive reviews from voters and voting authorities around the world by providing accurate and transparent results election after election. February’s elections will mark the second occasion the opposition candidates requests the National Electoral Council (CNE) to carry out their primaries using Venezuela’s state of the art voting system. The recurrence denotes an important change in how some opposition leaders perceive the Venezuelan system provided by Smartmatic, as the most vociferous opponents of electronic voting now endorse the system and will participate in the elections as candidates at different levels of the primaries.

“We are very glad that all parties involved have welcomed our technology. Our system provides not only enormous monetary and logistic advantages, but also, auditability and efficency levels that are unobtainable with manual voting”, said Chief Executive Officer of Smartmatic, Antonio Mugica. “We celebrate that misinformation and doubt have cleared the way for transparency and trust”. As time has passed, and multiple elections have been won and lost by the different actors of the Venezuelan political spectrum, lingering doubts about the transparency and efficiency of the system have disipated.

Venezuela, nowadays a world reference in the adoption of fully automated electoral processes, began its electronic voting experience in 1998 using only scanners for vote counting. The country moved forward by automating all stages of the process in 2004 using Smartmatic’s technology. From the 2004 referendum recall the company has grown to become the world leader in electronic voting with more than 1.5 billion audited votes and dozens of elections held throughout the world.

Technological Changes for 2012 Elections with Digital Voting

Source: everystockphoto.com

We are set to see many major elections all around the world in 2012. Not surprisingly, the technology involved continues to evolve and change with the times, including a greater adoption of electronic and digital voting systems. These changes could have a dramatic impact on how the elections turn out.

The Rising Influence of Social Media

The 2008 US Presidential election proved that the Internet can be a huge source of support for candidates. Social media efforts by the then candidate Barack Obama are credited for a substantial part of his eventual victory. Four years have passed since then and social media is more prevalent than ever.

For instance, there is a new Facebook campaign that asks voters "What Matters Most." Here, voters can prioritize the three issues that they care about most and have these issues showcased in New York City's Times Square. Similarly, the growth of Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks will have a greater impact on how people choose their candidates.

The Expansion of E-Voting in Latin America

While electronic voting has already been used in countries like Venezuela and Mexico, e-voting systems will continue to expand throughout Central and South America in 2012. There will be more automated voting in places like Peru, for instance, as well as the implementation of automatic tallying in the Dominican Republic.

Similar changes are expected to take place in Mexico, Paraguay, Venezuela and beyond. In the case of Paraguay, there is a push toward allowing citizens living abroad to vote remotely, a law that would lend itself to an e-voting paradigm over the Internet rather than through postal mail or via embassies.

E-Voting with iPads in United States

During a special election in November 2011, the state of Oregon allowed disabled voters to cast their ballots using a specially equipped Apple iPad. This is said to continue for 2012, paving the way for the use of even more technology as part of the electoral process. Oregon, among 10 other states in the USA, will also allow residents to register to vote online, rather than having to complete voter registration in person or by mail.

The electoral system in the United States is incredibly complicated, as each county determines its own way to conduct the vote. As such, e-voting takes place in some counties, but not in others, and even those that do participate in e-voting may use considerably different systems. For instance, Long Beach California city officials used RFID chips on ballot boxes to track their movement.

Electronic Voting Abroad

More e-voting is expected elsewhere too, with online voting being planned for Bridgewater, Nova Scotia in Canada. Electronic voting is being welcomed in Botswana, as well as other African states. Kenya has had e-voting for some time and Ghana is planning for e-voting by 2016. Belgium has signed a 10-year contract for automated voting as well.

The digital vote may still be somewhat disjointed in its application around the world, but the same can be said about more conventional ballots too. That said, technology continues to evolve, become more reliable, and offer greater security and accuracy than ever before.