Almost 4 hours after polls were scheduled to begin in this year’s University of Ghana SRC Election to elect executive officers to man the SRC for the next academic year, not a single student has been able to cast his vote.
This is not because students are unwilling to vote, as checks from some polling stations have revealed some students coming out to exercise their franchise but because the software to be used for the election has not even been installed on the computers at the various polling stations.
LegonConnect has tried on several occasion to reach the Electoral Commissioners but their phones are off and Mr. Forson, the software developer cannot be reached as well.
The Electoral Commission in its Election C.I for this year’s election indicated that manual voting will be used but from all indications this will not be the case and has drawn the anger of many students who feel the software is a recipe for rigging as been witnessed in past SRC elections.
One irate student, as reported by the Radio Univers, is willing to stop the process at his Hall if the agreed on hybrid system is used.
The hybrid system is where after one casts his vote on the voting screen, a chit will be generated for him showing who he or she voted for which he or she will drop in a box provided so that after the electronic votes are counted and there are discrepancies, that in the box too will be counted to see if it tallies with the results provided by the software.
This is to ensure that the past allegations of the software being manipulated to favour some particular candidates does not occur again.
But so far, so bad as the foregoing may be the grounds for a more apathy ridden election.
Photos Credit – Radio Univers Facebook Page