Lessons for Nasa from Ghana on 'adopting' polling stations

This week, Raila Odinga launched the National Super Alliance’s Adopt a Polling Station initiative, which seeks to have a five-member team for each of the country’s 41,000 polling stations. The aim? To protect the presidential vote during voting, county and tallying. This includes ensuring that everyone is verified and that ballots are counted in accordance with the voters’ intention. It also requires copies of polling station–level results to be sent to a central Nasa office for a parallel tally to guard against any changes at the constituency or national level.

This approach is informed by previous experience, and by allegations of ballot box stuffing, miscounts and incorrect tallies in every multi-party election to date. However, it also draws from Ghana where the Opposition launched their own Adopt a Polling Station campaign ahead of the country’s polls last December. In that election, the principal opposition leader, Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party beat the incumbent president John Mahama of the National Democratic Congress with 54 to 44 per cent of the popular vote. Significantly, while this was the third time that Ghana had experienced a peaceful transfer of power, it was the first time that an incumbent had stood and lost.

Moreover, ahead of the polls, the NPP, like Nasa, claimed that the previous election had been stolen and that the electoral commission was biased against them. In addition, they were convinced, on the basis of an unsuccessful electoral petition in 2011, that an election is won or lost at the polling station. In response, they developed an impressive system of party agents who watched the voting and counting with a keen eye, and who compiled their own parallel tally from the polling station level results or, what in Ghana are called, the “pink sheets”.

This system of party agents worked remarkably well. From my own observations in the Opposition's stronghold of Ashanti, I was struck by the vigilance and commitment of NPP and NDC agents; it was clear that the NPP had a final tally of the presidential result the morning after the election, which they could support with copies of the "pink sheets".

So what can Nasa learn from the NPP’s Adopt a Polling Station initiative? First, it is important to recognise that this was not the first time that the NPP and NDC had deployed party agents. However, both parties had learnt that this system often falls short because agents are bought or intimidated; leave their station at one point during the process; or do not fully understand the process and are, for example, tricked into signing blank “pink sheets”.

In response, both parties ensured that agents were well remunerated, that food and water were distributed to every polling station and that supervisors travelled around the polling stations to ensure that everything was going according to plan.

They also ensured that agents were loyal party members who could understand, and be able to check, each stage of the process. To this end, both the NPP and NDC reached out to educated members, held multiple trainings and set tests as a way to ensure that all agents understood the electoral rules and regulations and could do basic mathematics. This was facilitated by the use of established party structures and offices throughout the country including in the strongholds of their opponent.

EVERY STEP

Both parties also learnt that agents had to watch every step of the process and that they had to collect evidence that could stand up in court. Most importantly, they recognised the importance of keeping copies of the results from every single polling station.

The implication is that it is possible to improve the credibility of an election through a system of party agents, but it is expensive and logistically demanding. This is because it requires an uninterrupted network of focused and keen-eyed party loyalists who cannot be bribed or intimidated, as well as a clear chain of communication for results to be reported and tallied.

Only time will tell whether Nasa has the capacity to copy the NPP’s efforts, at the same time as they seek to raise funds and mobilise support, but it is clear that the lessons are being learnt.

Gabrielle Lynch is associate professor of comparative politics at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom.

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Twitter: @GabrielleLynch6