What Votes Count? On Voter Fraud And Intimidation [An African Election]

It all came down to Tain. In An African Election, the results of the 2008 were decided based on multiple run-off votes. Each time, the paper ballots were painstakingly counted and verified, and there was much discussion about not disenfranchising the elderly and those who did not have formal identification.

But times have changed.

The decision was made to upgrade the voting process from the fingerprint model to a complex biometric system and is being rolled out nation wide. Officials are ferreting out multiple registrations and asking citizens to come forward and assist with the process.

Registered voters also received voter ID cards and are informed that they will not be able to vote if they are not on the national register.

Debates about what is required to vote are tough ones–on one hand, there needs to be a checks-and-balances system that ensures that people can’t game the process. On the other hand, throwing up barriers tends to reduce people’s willingness to vote. And the requirements can be quite strict. During the registration period, would-be voters had plenty to remember:

Prospective voters would have to show their old voters identity cards, passports, national identity cards or National Health Insurance cards.

People without any of these must be accompanied by two registered voters who will vouch for their nationality and age.

Ghanaian birth and baptismal certificates cannot be used.

Some political party operatives are angry, believing the registration drive has been mishandled; the Electoral Commission has refused to extend the deadline.

There is no easy solution for this kind of problem–the issue of managing elections plagues every country. In the United States, conservative groups are using the ghost of the ACORN scandal to anoint themselves “poll watchers” to root out voter fraud. While their stated intentions are to prevent election fraud, these groups produce the same effect as Ghana’s “macho men”–intimidating voters at the ballot box. As Brentin Mock reports for Colorlines:

Expert after expert has refuted assertions of widespread voter fraud. In Florida, only 10 cases of a non-citizens who may have voted have been found, according to University of Florida elections expert Dan Smith. Colorado’s Gesssler regularly sells stories about masses of people double-voting and literally dying to commit fraud—so much that even their corpses vote. But a News21 investigation found just 16 cases of double voting or voter impersonation since 2000 in Colorado, and just one conviction in 2008.

There have, however, been ample complaints about True the Vote intimidating voters. During Wisconsin’s recall election, students complained that True the Vote volunteers harassed them. The group’s regional director Erin Anderson told me the charges were false, but acknowledged that they couldn’t account for every volunteer they had in the state. “We had an online training, but a lot of people participated in it,” said Anderson. “We know who they are but we don’t know where they ended up.”

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