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ICT and the Ghanaian Election

dotFAF reminds us that Ghana’s presidential and parliamentary elections begin today:

There’s one country America wont be invading anytime soon. We dont have any oil. We love abusing freedoms (of speech and of the media). And we absolutely like voting. Go Ghana!!

Ghanians are voting today, and by god i’ve never seen such fanaticm since… well since people queued up to buy copies of Halo 2.

While there’s been some talk in the Ghanaian press about a need to avoid ethnic incitement leading up to the election, a general expectation seems to be that the vote will be free, fair and non-violent… and, as a result, there’s been very little international press attention.

One reason to believe the election will be free and fair? The active use of technology to monitor the elections. Kwami Ahiabenu has an excellent article on GhanaWeb about the use of cellphones and live radio to monitor polling sites and report results, about CD-ROM based voter registers, and results processing software to help search for fraud. Very, very cool.