Prisoners allowed to vote in Ghana’s presidential elections

Some prisoners have been allowed to cast their votes from the walls of the Ho Central Prison, Accra, in Ghana’s 2020 presidential and legislative elections.

The elections were largely peaceful but violence was reported at Christ polling station in Kasoa, Awutu Senya East constituency after some men in a black SUV reportedly shot at two people inside another vehicle at the polling station..

The prisoners were not responsible for the violence. The candidates signed a peace pact and over 60,000 security personnel including paramilitary forces were deployed to forestall violence.

Ghana’s news agency reports that this was the first time prisoners were allowed to exercise their franchise in Ghana.

The Ghana prison service was extended the privilege by the country’s Electoral Commission allowing voting inside the prison premises on account of security.

According to the news agency, upon a visit to the Ho Prisons, which has two polling stations, to verify the exercise, they saw some inmates going through the exercise with ease.

By 0945 hours a total of 74 inmates have expressed their voting rights according to Mawuko Maqueson Afeti, the Presiding Officer.

The two polling stations were carved out of the Volta Regional Museum polling station A and B to give the inmate the opportunity to exercise their franchise in this year’s elections.

Martin Darku, assistant director of Prisons, told the GNA that the opening of polling stations for inmates gave officers a huge respite and risks of transporting sometimes dangerous inmates through town.

The agency also reported that efforts underway to send some inmates to the STC Polling station to allow 14 of them, whose names were absent on the electoral roll A and B to also vote, and that this was due to a mix-up in the compilation process.

Incumbent president, Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party is seeking a second four-term and is expected to beat his opponent John Mahama, a former president from 2012 to 2017, from the opposition National Democratic Congress.

There are more than 17 million registered voters this year, with more than 33,000 polling stations.