REFORMING GHANA'S ELECTORAL SYSTEM

Teething challenges in Ghana’s electoral process isa weakness in sustaining multi-party democracy. This study explores obstacles hindering the electoral process in a multi-party state system in Ghana with specific reference to Wa Municipality in the Upper West Region. The focus of this study was to examine obstacles militating against popular participation in the electoral process within the Wa Central Constituency. The study adapted a descriptive case study approach which involved six (6) communities, purposively selected based on the historical records of these areas on the conduct of the electoral process within the Constituency. Structured questionnaires, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions were employed to collect data. The results showed insufficient knowledge among respondents in the electoral process, apathy/low public participation during exhibition of voters register, politicians luring minors to register/influencing eligible registrants to engage in double registration, inadequate stakeholder consultation/involvement during electoral boundaries demarcation and insufficient funding among others as hampering the electoral process in Ghana. Broader consultations in delimiting boundaries to reduce violence, open continuous registration, Biometric registration, mechanisms to prevent minors from registering, public education on the electoral process and timely provision of funds for electoral activities are recommended in strengthening Ghana’s electoral system. In conclusion, since the introduction of the 1992 constitution, the country has achieved political stability after going through five (5) general elections two of which involved a peaceful transfer of power from ruling government to another previously in opposition.

Journal of Economics and Sustainable Development, 2020

This article examines Ghana's efforts in advancing its democratic consolidation since the country transitioned from authoritarian regime to a multiparty democracy in 1992. At the center of this democratic development is the country's conduct of successful multiparty elections, although these elections have often been characterized by irregularities. Given the upward trajectory of Ghana's democracy through repetitive elections, the article draws on the concept of repetitive multiparty elections/democratization to examine whether Ghana's efforts at democratic progress through repetitive elections, although deficient in some respects, have helped to advance the country's democratic development or not. The significance of the article rests on the argument that the conceptual idea of repetitive multiparty elections, even when flawed, provides utility in the attempt to better understand the role of elections and democratic advancement in Ghana.

Journal of African Elections, 2022

The results of Ghana's 2012 and 2020 elections were challenged in the nation's Supreme Court. Even though the court processes in both cases did not alter the election results, they nevertheless exposed monumental flaws in the electoral processes. The flaws in the 2012 electoral processes were exposed at the Supreme Court and featured in the final judgment of the court in a manner that allowed the Electoral Commission to initiate moves towards electoral reforms. However, the challenges of the 2020 elections, though exposed at the courts, were never featured in the final judgment of the Supreme Court. This paper discusses the implications of the 2020 election petition for the future of electoral reforms in Ghana. It argues that the rigid application of the letter of the law by the Supreme Court and the relegation to the background of the thorny issues of electoral challenges in the 2020 elections, would render the quest for further electoral reforms difficult. This would then make the future of any attempt to fine-tune the electoral processes quite bleak.

Ghana and Nigeria are two countries in the West African sub-region that share significant historical similarities like British colonialism, nationalism, economic crisis, prolonged military rule, multi-party democracy and are in their fourth republics. With the global democratization process, Ghana and Nigeria successfully made the transition to civil rule in 1992 and 1999 respectively and are rated differently on the democratization scale. While the former is rated high, the latter is rated low in comparative ranking within the same period of democratization. This paper set out to assess the effectiveness of electoral administration bodies in the conduct of credible and acceptable elections in Nigeria and Ghana and to suggest possible ways of improving election administration in line with international best practices. With intense reliance on descriptive analysis, the paper noted that whereas Ghana has made impressive progress in the democratization process in terms of effective adm...

The study sought to assess the perception of quality of the electoral process in Ghana using the Tamale Metropolis as a case study. This was achieved by measuring and comparing the expectations and perceptions of voters using the SERVQUAL scores. 179 voter used in the survey. The results showed that voters' expectations about quality election were very high. The voters' perception on the performance of the electoral commission was also found to be below their expectations.

2013

The 2012 elections were peaceful, but the results were contested by the New Patriotic Party in a petition brought to the Supreme Court challenging the National Democratic Congress and the Electoral Commission of Ghana. Revelations during the hearing of the petition raised some disquiet about the abilities of the ECG and the integrity of Ghana's electoral institutions. The fallout from the 2012 elections demands a criti cal intellectual engagement with the institutional foundation of the elections. There were several institutional changes in the Ghanaian system in the build-up to the elections as well as changes in the general political economy of the country that have made access to public office particularly attractive. This article reviews the institutional context of the elections and examines the constitutional and non-constitutional rules relating to electoral governance, focusing on such issues as electoral management, delimitation of constituencies and assembly size, electoral formula, voting procedure and ballot structure and the party system. It demonstrates how these institutions were implicated in the challenges relating to the electoral process during the 2012 elections, providing insights into how to overcome them.

Journal of African elections, 2007

The main purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of why African electoral systems should be reformed and how to do so in order to improve the quality of representation, participation, and government effectiveness. We attempt to offer a generic framework, a menu, so to speak, whereby African political parties and policy makers can reflect on the current state of play vis-à-vis their electoral systems and then decide whether a comprehensive or partial electoral reform agenda is needed. The paper also delineates the various institutions and stakeholders that should be involved in the electoral system reform process. This is a call to improve the reform process instead of entrusting it with a limited range of state-sponsored institutions, which often create more problems than those they contrive to solve. The paper is divided into four sections: a) a synoptic exposé of electoral reforms; b) the various types of electoral reforms and the factors which militate against them; c) lessons from the African experience with electoral system reforms; and d) an analysis of the main stakeholders required to steer a comprehensive electoral system reform agenda.

Cogent Social Sciences

Democracy under any system of rule is associated with vibrant political parties and credible elections. Both are indispensable in a representative democracy. The good conduct of elections within a political party promotes and consolidates democracy. Political parties in Ghana have suffered internal conflict resulting in factions, break-away, and the formation of new parties because of undemocratic party operations especially in the conduct of primaries. This act threatens the country's attempt to consolidate its democracy. Internal party reforms are adopted to ensure democratic practices and operations. The reforms include widening the electoral base of the party in the selection of candidates, simultaneous conduction of polls across constituencies, and restriction of candidates eligible for elections. These reforms are to reduce vote-buying, intimidation, physical assault, and fierce competition to enhance legitimisation of election results and the acceptability of candidates. The paper assessed how the various reforms adopted by the two major political parties in Ghana have influenced and legitimised the conduct of presidential primaries. The paper adopted a qualitative research design through interviews and reviewed extant literature to set the theoretical basis of the study. It is realised ABOUT THE AUTHOR Michael Amoako Addae is an Mphil candidate at the University of Ghana, Legon with the Department of Political Science. He holds a Bachelor in Arts (BA) degree from the same University. His research interest covers elections, governance, democracy, gender and national development. This paper was based on the author's research in shaping and contributing to effective party politics in Ghana. The work examines how political parties can contribute to the consolidation of democracy in Ghana.

African elections are usually highly contested and competitive because of the winner takes all making of most of the political systems on the continent. Since the third wave of democracy (Huntington, 1991), due to the competitive nature of these elections, attention is usually focused on making these elections peaceful and often relatively credible. Little attention has been paid to documenting good practices across these retinue of elections with the bid to providing election practitioners opportunity to learn from good practices that could be applied in similar context and circumstances. This paper is an attempt at that. It chronicles some of the important measures deployed by different stakeholders towards successful 2016 General Elections in Ghana. It recommends that managing electoral competition in African election requires commitment of political stakeholders, development of mechanisms and measures for both political and judicial redress and commitment to rule of law through independence of the judiciary

Journal of Scientific Research and Reports, 2014

Ghana is one of the thriving democracies in sub-Saharan Africa. It has held relatively free, fair, and transparent elections and in 2000 and 2008, it passed Samuel Huntington's (1991) 'two turnover test' of democratic consolidation when peaceful alternation of power occurred. However, last year's election, the sixth in the series of national and parliamentary elections held since the country was ushered into the Fourth Republic was different from the previous five that came before it. Concerted effort was taken to pursue alleged electoral infractions at the Supreme Court rather than the previous practice of pretending that nothing happened. This paper uses a qualitative research design in which documents critical to the 2012 elections including: the results of the elections, the first written petition of the Election Petitions, the responses from the 1 st and 2 nd Respondents, the amended petition, the written addresses of all parties to the Election Petition, and the written judgments of all the nine Justices that sat on the case were gathered and analyzed. These documents are manually coded into themes which are subsequently discussed. The paper found that although infractions occurred in last year's election they were not outcome-determinative. They were purely administrative and in most cases illadvised decisions by electoral officials that had no impact on the overall results and the winner of the elections. Notwithstanding the above conclusion, the paper proposes some administrative, structural, and legal reforms vis-à-vis the Ghanaian electoral architecture.

Journal of African elections, 2013

Ghana's Fourth Republic has a reputation for having a reasonably high degree of institutionalisation in election administration. Its electoral and democratic success stories have largely been associated with the autonomyenhancing institutional design and leadership of the Electoral Commission of Ghana (ECG), which engender a degree of public confidence and trust. The 2012 elections, however, produced an ominous twist in the hitherto sacrosanct nature of democratic legitimacy in Ghana. This article assesses the role of the ECG, drawing on the quality of the elections, measured by the level of participation, competitiveness and legitimacy, as well as the actions and inactions of the ECG at critical stages in the electoral cycle. Overall, the ECG could be adjudged to have done well, especially on the first two indicators, given the high level of voter turnout (80.15%) and the closeness of the total votes and seats won by the ruling National Democratic Congress and the main opposition, the New Patriotic Party. However, the legitimacy of the election was fiercely challenged with the opposition's rejection of the results and attendant litigation in the Supreme Court. The problem may have been accentuated by the new political economy of oil and the strong desire to access and control oil windfall, the messy application of biometric voter verification as a result of the malfunctioning of the equipment and the controversy over the delimitation of 45 new constituencies in a manner interpreted by opposition parties as gerrymandering. It seems these are not heady days for Ghana's democracy. Rising levels of adversarial elite behaviour not only pose serious democratic threats they raise questions about the depth of the much touted institutional foundations of the country's democracy.

2019

The paper presents why there has been domination of two parties in the country's fourth republic. Ghana has gone through a myriad of electoral reforms and elections in the fourth republic resulting in two-party system which is at variance with the constitutional provisions of multi-party democracy. There have been varied views as to the cause of the two-party dominance attributable to efficient and workable manifestos, lack of state funds of parties to have equal measure of strength and ethnic dimensions to voting pattern. The focus of the paper is to examine whether the electoral system of majoritarian and plurality rule has contributed to the dominance of two parties with scholarly articles as a source of secondary data. The study found out that the de-facto two party systems in Ghana is as a result of electoral system which translates votes cast into seats or executive power.

The paper investigated the relationship between electoral reform and good governance and how the two can enhance sustainable development in Nigeria. Electoral reform has become inevitable in Nigeria granted shenanigans that have come to pervade process of election in the country. Election frauds have constituted a threat to the corporate existence of Nigeria. Military incursions in 1966 and 1983 were attributed to election frauds that led to arson and wanton destruction of lives and property. Even recently, the Fourth Republic has witnessed unprecedented rate of election violence, politically motivated killings and excessive use of thugs. The common parlance in electoral arena in Nigeria is "do or die". The essence and purpose of election have been defeated and discarded while monopoly of weapons, violence and money politics have displaced and replaced the electorate in determining who occupies what position. There has been promotion of personal aggrandisement in governance; electoral politics has promoted mediocrity while at the same time relegated merit and competence. Little wonder that sustainable development has become elusive and rule of man has overtaken rule of law. It is on this basis that this paper has decided to find out the factors that have made it impossible to have decent and credible election in Nigeria. It is also important to look at the past electoral reforms in Nigeria with a view to finding out while they were incapable of correcting the anomalies in the election. The paper employed content analysis as a method of data gathering and relied, to a large extent, on public