this election seems to be about npp's work over the last 8 years and rawlings.

ask Ghanaians why won't you vote for NDC? they'll say because the NDC has Rawlings.
The NPP's campaign is what they've done, things like capitation grant, NHIS, FCUBE, NYEP, etc. The NDC's campaign is what the negatives associated with the NPP, reckless spending of money, the drug trade, etc, etc.

Campaign of issues? we haven't really been getting that. 28th is around the corner, we'll see what Ghanaians would say/choose.

the destiny of a nation at any given time depends on the opinions and contributions of its young men and women.

Interesting recognition of ghanaian election monitoring; they should have used the system in the usa election 2000. :)

Ghana puts faith in humble text message

By Matthew Green in Accra

Published: December 8 2008 18:17 | Last updated: December 8 2008 18:17

Adopting the soothing tones of an operator on an emergency hotline, Harriet Potakey, one of a score of controllers at Ghana’s election monitoring “command centre”, seeks to calm an excited caller.

“Just relax,” she says, coaxing the man via a hands-free device attached to her mobile phone. “Did the polling station open by 7am?” she asks, tapping data into a spreadsheet. “Yes, I am listening.”

Ms Potakey and the man calling from a polling centre hundreds of miles away in western Ghana are pioneering a system that aims to harness the power of Africa’s mobile phones to prevent politicians from stealing elections.

Explosions of violence in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Nigeria, where 400 people were killed after a local poll last month, show how quickly disputes over results can degenerate.

Ghana has one of Africa’s most impressive records for credible elections. But the prize of oil from a newly discovered offshore field will offer the greatest spoils for the victor since multi-party politics was introduced in 1992.

Sunday’s voting in presidential and parliamentary elections passed largely peacefully. Early returns suggested a tight race between Nana Akufo-Addo, the ruling party candidate, and John Atta Mills, the main opposition contender to succeed John Kufuor, president, who is stepping down after two terms.

With the result likely to be close, neighbours will be waiting to see how deep the roots of Ghana’s democracy run. In the David and Goliath struggle between Africa’s pro-democracy activists and politicians intent on cooking results, the greatest weapon could be the humble text.

The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (Codeo), made up of Ghanaian civil society groups, is using mobile phones to provide what it believes will be a near perfect view of the conduct of the polls and the results.

The system works like this: volunteers with mobile phones monitor a representative sample of 1,000 out of some 21,000 polling stations. As voting gets under way, they send text messages containing data on the conduct in their polling station to a toll-free number. A cheat-sheet lists the codes. For example, a text containing “D1” means “ballot box missing”.

Mobile-based schemes have been used to monitor votes in Indonesia, Montenegro, Egypt and Sierra Leone in recent years, but the developers say Ghana has the most sophisticated version yet deployed. Codeo volunteers hope the SMS-based scheme can be replicated elsewhere to prevent incumbents leaning on electoral officials to bump up their tallies.

Working from an upper-floor room containing flat-screen computers in the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Accra, the capital, Codeo believes its parallel count of the ballots cast in Sunday’s elections will provide a powerful deterrent to fraud.

Kojo Asante, a lawyer who manages the project, says the system offers “an added level of protection of the people’s will”.

Ghana’s market of 23m people has attracted big companies such as South Africa’s MTN and the UK’s Vodafone, which bought a 70 per cent stake in state-owned Ghana Telecom for $900m (€695m, £606m) in August. Extensive network coverage is a boon for monitors, although one observer on an island had to travel by speedboat to obtain reception.

Ms Potakey’s caller was a monitor seeking to amend the figure he had given for the number of ballot papers supplied at his station after realising he had made an error. Another observer reported that washable ink, rather than the official indelible variety, was being used at another station to mark voters’ fingers.

After counting finishes at each centre, the monitors send the results via SMS to allow a computerised tally of the outcome. “You can confidently come up with results that are 95 per cent reliable,” says Ms Potakey. “It’s a big deterrent to politicians because all eyes are watching.”

Developers of the scheme, which was set up using technical expertise from the National Democratic Institute in the US and funding from USAid, admit it is no panacea. A less sophisticated parallel count in Zimbabwe failed to stop outbreaks of violence and it is unclear whether a successful independent tally would have averted Kenya’s crisis. Nevertheless, the sheer speed and reduced margin for error of the SMS-based system is light years ahead of techniques available in the past.

Codeo will release its tally after the electoral commission declares the winner in the next few days. Should there be a big discrepancy, the system – and volunteers such as Ms Potakey – will face their truest test.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
source, financial times