The Director of Advocacy and Policy Engagement at the Center for Democratic Development (CDD), Dr. Kojo Asante, has backed National Democratic Congress, NDC on their calls for audit of the Electoral Commission Information Technology System.
Dr. Kojo believes the audit will address the weaknesses of the IT system of the EC, as the commission itself has admitted there are such vulnerabilities within their IT systems.
Dr. Asante said “The NDC’s request for a multi-stakeholder engagement on the IT system is a fair one”.
He argued that the EC needs not to give only assurance, but to demonstrate it. “This needs to be demonstrated with technical expertise”.
He stated that “The same principle applies to the release of the corrected provisional voters register. Just like political parties will verify the voter data, they should also be involved in the process of verifying the security of the IT system”.
Dr. Asante revealed that the EC had engaged a service provider in the quite to conduct a system-wide vulnerability test to assess and rectify the flaws of the IT system.
Against this, he said “It’s important to remember that this is not just a technical issue; it’s a matter of national interest. If the IT system is vulnerable, it opens the door for manipulation. We can’t afford that in an election”.
Dr. Asante, explained that the “liveliness check,” introduced by the EC to combat illegal voter transfers is half of the solution because there needs a comprehensive review of the system’s overall security.
He also called on the Commission to engage the IT experts of the various political parties, including Independent candidates.
“The EC has already said they are doing a self-assessment. Why not extend that by inviting IT experts from political parties and civil society to verify the steps they’ve taken? This could prevent unnecessary delays and build trust.”
According to him an IPAC meeting without independent candidates and civil society groups eradicates incivility and multi-stakeholder approach, hence the need to engage all vested groups.
He reiterated on Joynews PM Express that he “was expecting that independent candidates and civil society groups should have been invited to this meeting. The voter register is important to anyone participating in the election. I don’t see why they were left out”.
