The police 2 persons after they were caught taking photographs of their ballot paper after participating in the special voting exercise Tuesday at the Kpeshie District Police headquarters in Nungua in Greater Accra.
The two caught the attention of some eagle-eyed polling agents after they “kept long” in the voting booth.
The agents then alerted the Police who after browsing through their smartphones arrested them for the “disclosure of votes”.
The duo are currently assisting the Kpeshie Division of the Ghana Police Service with investigations into the matter.
What the law says
Article 49 (1) of the 1992 Constitution states that “At any public election of referendum, voting shall be by secret ballot”.
However, legal practitioner, Samson Lardy Anyenini contends that the country’s electoral laws do not criminalise making one’s vote public.
“The law must make sense and the law must be enforceable, how on earth can you enforce making my vote secret if I wanted to tell about my vote in an exit poll, would you say I have committed an offence,” Mr Anyenini said in an interview on Joy FM.
“The law’s requirement in the current election law is that because the constitution requires that the vote must be secret, the state or the Electoral Commission (EC) and its officers must endeavour that your vote is secret… It names particular officers of the EC and says they should help to ensure that your vote is protected but if you have the right and you don’t want to assert that right, what crime is there? My point actually is that, if you read the offences you do not find an offence against the person who decides to waive that right, it is rather the EC officers if they do not help protect your right that maybe in offence”.
