There were presidential and parliamentary elections here last Sunday 7 December 2008. Some people lined up to vote at 3am (polls scheduled to open at 7am). We had been hearing for weeks pleas from the government, religious groups, the political parties, civic organizations, schools, etc. to have a peaceful election. Except for one story of a man who showed up at a polling place wearing a t-shirt of one of the parties who was beat up (you are not allowed to wear anything denoting support of a party at a polling place) it all seemed peaceful.
Here is how it works: You show your voters id card. If you have lost it, and do not realize it early enough to get a replacement, you are not able to vote. There are apparently numerous problems with the voters register (list of registered voters) - people who are dead are not removed, people who are too young to vote are registered (This is an issue since it is estimated that only 30% of births in Ghana are officially recorded, so many people do not have proof of their age. Therefore, young adults can show up with a "relative" who attests to them being 18 and they get registered.), or people who have more than one voter id card (meaning they could vote more than once).
After you show your ID card, your pinky is dipped in indelible ink (to prove you have voted and prevent you from doing so again). Then another finger, either the thumb or index - there was confusion over this apparently - is inked so that you can affix your fingerprint to the ballot next to the party of your choosing. There are separate ballots for president and parliament. The ballots contain only pictures (in color) of the party symbols and photos of the candidates - no words (remember it is estimated that 50% of the population here is illiterate).
Here you can see a woman who has just finished casting her vote for president - the cardboard box to her right is the "voting booth" and she is placing her completed ballot into a sealed, clear rubbermaid-esque container.
Since there were separate ballots for president and parliament, there were two cardboard voting booths and two boxes into which people deposited ballots.
These photos are from Tema, a port town a half hour east of Accra. Leslie, a fellow Fulbrighter, teaches there, and we observed some of the voting on her campus. We also watched them count ballots. The voting was open from 7am until 5pm. At 5pm, the officials from the Electoral Commission (in the baby blue vests and hats) opened the box containing the presidential ballots. They were dumped out onto a table immediately next to the open air polling place. Apparently they were being sorted into piles for each of the 8 presidential candidates as they were being unfolded. Then they were counted. Below you can see the woman on the right of the photo in the blue vest holding up a ballot. She would hold one up, count it (1), put it down into a pile on her right, pick up the next ballot, count it (2), etc. The people standing around the table who are not wearing the blue vests are representatives from each of the 8 political parties that had presidential candidates. They are there to observe and sign off on the results as well as the manner in which the ballots were counted. The other people in the foreground are just like Leslie and I - they wanted to witness the ballot counting in the constituency in which they voted (although, of course, neither Leslie nor I voted).
For the next 3 days the news was an endless cycle of results being called in from various constituencies around the country. Constitutionally, the Electoral Commission has 72 hours to count votes (after they are counted locally, they are taken to a central location to be verified). Around 2pm on Wednesday, the results were announced - it is not over! There will be a run-off election between the two top candidates, both of who received over 47% of the votes cast, but neither received the 50% + 1 that is necessary to win the presidency. Unlike in the US, a plurality is not sufficient (sorry Bill Clinton), you need a true majority. The run off is scheduled for 28 December. Hopefully, there will be a smaller number of rejected ballots during the run off; there were more than 300,000 last week - people used the wrong finger, if they folded their ballot while the fingerprint was still wet (this creates a double image and leads to the ballot being rejected), etc. Certainly the people who voted for the other candidates are in a position of power now in determining who runs Ghana for the next four years. I will update on the final results later.
