CHALLENGES FACED AT VARIOUS POLLING STATIONS DURING ELECTIONS AND ITS

EFFECT ON VOTER TURN OUT.

Conducting of elections have been one of the most prominent ways of acquiring the mantle of
power in most countries in africa and the western world. Since 1984, research shows that 218
elections have been conducted in 59 countries.Asian countries like china, Afghanstan, indonesia etc,
United State of America and other democratic countries all believe in parliamentary election as
means to vote leaders into power. Africa however realised elections to be the most important
element in the liberal democratisation process after decolonsation and the initiation of multiple
parties in the early 1990s. Political scientist staffan I. Lindberg gatelectiohers data from every
national election contested in africa from 1989 to 2003shows the covering of 232 elections in 44
countries. Failure to conduct election in a democratic country potray the predominance of
dictatorship in the country. In Ghana election is conducted every 4 years following legal procedures
to appoint its leaders. In the process, citizens vote by visiting various polling stations they have
been assigned to accordong to their national identification cards for them to vote for the party they
confine in and thestay believe deserves to rule the country. Staistically, 9 elections have been
conducted since 1960 when Nkrumah won about 89% of the vote. Since the time for the conduction
of elections, several issues have been faced especially due to the rapid population and urban growh
of towns and most of this issues are faced at the places the elections arectaking place making the
voter turn out a big challenge to selecting competent leaders. This same problem extends to all part
of the countries sectors where small elections are held but my problem seeks to focus on the
university of ghana as the premiere university since the problem have existed over years but is less
undermined. An article by Emmanuel Debrah [1993/ 2008] says that Ecs success were largerly but
not exclusively in the making of electoral process . Therefore, performance of the EC in the
electoral process concerning the rules of the game have been poor. Students are alwas encouraged to
participate in such activities to groom us for future leadership but have the government, the EC in
charge of tertiary politics, the schools authorities and even the lecturers engaged students voters on
the challenges they encounter,,,. Maybe To some extent, electoral commision could be trying their
best but they can be lackiing special initiatives to adopt in improving elections perhaps resources
provided are less and may be finding difficulties in invsting into the provision of many plloing
stations and ballot issuers to enhance a quick free and fair election and less affect voter turn
out.This essay tends to understand the impact on the voter turn out as a result of the challenge faced
at the polling stations during elections on campus.
Research problem.
Initially in the 18 centuries, tertiary level also known as univesity , was not easily accessible to
everyone compared to now. Before a student would be allowed to enter the university, that person
should be old and matured enough to take responsibilties. However, things have metamorphosed
and now been made accessible to everyone once you are able to pass your wassce exams no matter
the age. Due to this, population have become high on campus with diverse people therefore, the
adoptation of the old ways of conducting elections in this 21st century turn to be ineffective yet
oversight. Several problems keep arising during elections at university of ghana which intend affect
the whole voter turn out at the polling stations whenever elections are conducted. One of the
Problems at polling stations is as a result less communique on how to vote before elections both
digitally and manually. The electoral commision hardly assign people to teach students how to vote
on the due day because they assume we are student and therefore are intelligent enough to know
how to vote.Have the electoral commission considered, those whose phones are missing or spoilt?,
visually impaired? the non residents as well?such people tend to have less knowledge on the student
voting process and they feel relunctant to move to the polling station since they might commit
themselves . At the end, it affect final percentage of the students population who turned up to vote.
Electoral commission then achieve a wrong target since less than half of the population did not
vote. The election conducted on campus is also a form politics so the risks involved is high when
the voting process begins at the stations. The provision of government securities such as policemen
or soldiers to guide the voting process at the various polling stations have been taken for granted.
This is because of lack of funds to pay their services after rendering them. Therefore, there is
always misunderstandings which lead to serious fights among opponents at some polling stations
since some rowdy students may turn out to outsmart others. Innocent people will then resist the
chance of they risking their lives and education to be at a place their lives and education will be
endangered. As a result, few get to decide and can even end up votting the incompetent leaders into
power. Nevertheless, bribery and corruptions by the aspirants and EC can cause low voter turnout.
Fake ballot papers are printed out and given to students without their notice and even some party
agents tend to smuggle votes for their leaders. In this case, why will students be interested in
wasting time to move to a polling station whilst he or she knows the election would not be free and
fair?. These problems are basically the reasons for the least turn out of voters on campus thus
affecting the EC and students governance. Therefore, this problem assessment will arouse the
interest of university leaders to make it a priorty of curbing the issue and working effectively with
the EC in the school because these actions are what grows into future politics thus making politics
an issue in ghana and countries worldwide currently. It all start from the foundaton which is being
ignored at the moment.
General objective of study.
The main aim of this research is to assess the reasons for the issues encountered since it has impact
on voter turn out during election.
1.The first sub objective is to examine the effect on students ballot issuers assigned at the various
polling stations and their problems they encounter with students coming to vote.
2.Another objective seeks to assess the reasons of the misundertanding encountered by various
aspirants and students voters after their effortless campaign projects embarked on campus.{Jesse
1988}.
3. nvertheless, this research is to understand why voter turnout keep reducing although population is
on the increase and the reason why electoral commission fail to do something about theproblem.
Specific research question.
1. have it been a difficult task for students to keep voting manually since technology has been
advanced and do they se it as a need to cast their vote at the polling stations?
2. have electoral commission also communicated aggressively to students on how to vote when they
get to the polling stations and also have they communicated all the various polling stations
accessible to students ?
3. do ballot issuers also face problems at the places they have been assigned to during the counting
process which affect the voter turn out and yet nothing has been ben done about the situation?

Significance of study
1. this research is a necessity since it will hep develop ideas of other means to be initiated in
carrying out orderly voting process at the polling station. Since students are mre into technology
now , electoral commission can now concentrate more on digitising voting than the manual voting
since they will use the voter turn out for hypothesis as part of the ellctoral refoms in 1993.
2. the idea of this research will draw the attention of the university authorities, student
representative council executives and also electoral commision to make make it a point to
communicate to students often how mandatory it is to partake in the election and how relevant it
will be to the student body because there is a need to vote out competent leaders through the
decision they take on the paper. Campain project should be conducted often to attract and interest
the student body to take the process serious.
3. studying this challenge will help electoral commision to understand the need to fomulate and
implement strong policies concerning voting malpractices like cheating, bribery and corruption
which tend to cause conflicts. These policies will bring out punishment to be metted out to aspirants
and students votes who tend to breach the rules. Voter turn out can be improved an predicions will
be right due to the free and fair elections conducted.

Research methodology.
The convictions of this research proposal will be analytical, ralistic and liberal since there will be a
necessity of applying the field of qualitative and quantitative research data analysis to complete my
genuine research. I will adopt the metod of extracting forml data from sample od students through
brief interviews to have their differential ideologies concerning what goes on at the various polling
stations, what they have witnessed, what they have experienced personally if there is any and
perhaps what they suggest should be done for them to be interested in participating in the legal
process. Questionnaires will be provided both digitally and manually to students to fill out asking
few questions conerning the various reasons students fail to partake and those that partake will also
answer why they partake and what they know about the effect of elections on voter turn out since
students elections over the years have become very expensive and involving exercise. This exercise
will be of essential pre condition of democracy in competitive election {P Norris 2002}. however,
sample will not involve the aspirants since they are probably aware of the voter turn out in
elections if they refuse to vote or convince and teach people the benefit of visiting polling stations
to cast their votes. The information which will be extracted will be used by elevtoral commision to
hypothesise the entire election in relation to the students population. Their work will then be more
feasible and about 80% accurate since trend will be determined with less stress. This mechanism
will also generate the interest of electoral commision and the student representative council
executives adopting new policies and initiatives for the elections yet to be conducted perhaps if they
will see it a need to provide more ballot post to avoid unecessary queues, if security will be
tightened, if ballot issuers will be monitored to avoid giving out fake ballot papers and many other
issues yet to be discovered. Quanlitative data analysis will also be introduced to access the moving
trend of voter turn out over the sucessive years from the collected data samples so far and this
sample data will be categorised using tables, graphs and statisticals formulas to compute the
frequencies of some unmeaningful data represented. Howvwer, students also like to participate in
group discussion because it is more interactive therefore, this informal method can be adopted to
examine both the internal and external factors affecting the the interest of students casting their
votes.
References.