The government has been called upon to enlist the support of its development partners to provide the Electoral Commission (EC) with the required financial and other resources to enable it to undertake the biometric registration of voters as a matter of urgency towards the 2012 elections. To that end, the EC has also been charged to produce a credible biometric register by 2012. In a communiqué issued at the end of a national conference on Biometric Voter Registration and E- Voting in Ghana which ended in Accra on Tuesday, February 9, 2010, the participants called on the EC and other agencies such as the National Identification Authority, the Ghana Statistical Service, the Births and Deaths Registry and the Ghana Health Service to collaborate and produce a comprehensive national identity. The workshop was under the auspices of the Danquah Institute's governance and development dialogue, with support from the World Bank and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. It urged the government, political parties, the EC and civil society to vigorously pursue the implementation of a biometric voter register, as endorsed by the EC and the seven political parties on Tuesday, May 12, 2009. They contended that Parliament should enact appropriate data protection legislation for Ghana in order to protect biometric and other data of individuals stored in government information repositories. It also urged the EC to adopt an appropriate electronic voting system for all national elections in Ghana as a means of eliminating the incidence of spoilt ballot papers and delayed counting, collation and declaration of election results. It should also implement e-voting on a pilot basis prior to its use in a national elections. "All stakeholders, including the Executive, the Legislature, the Judiciary, the EC, the National Commission on Civic Education, the political parties, the media and civil society organisations, should undertake public education on the merits and necessity for a biometric voters register and an electronic voting system and work towards their urgent implementation in our electoral system through advocacy, provision of budgetary support and appropriate electoral and other legislative reform," it said. It was agreed that some of the major difficulties which had affected general elections since the country returned to constitutional rule in 1993 and which nearly marred the 2008 general election included a bloated electoral register, multiple voting, voter impersonation, dud ballot papers, ballot box stuffing, ballot box theft, spoilt ballot papers, violence and intimidation. Others were disenfranchisement of prospective voters arising from difficulties in registering during voter registration exercises and long periods between the time voting ends and when results were declared. It acknowledged the strides so far made in the electoral system in addressing the challenges, adding that on Tuesday, May 12,2009, the EC and seven political parties, including the National Democratic Congress (NDC), the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the Convention People's Party (CPP) and the People's National Convention (PNC), through the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC), endorsed the compilation of a new voters register based on biometric technology as the solution to multiple registration and other electoral defects associated with voter registration in Ghana. It appreciated the fact that the country's electoral system would be more democratic, credible and free from violence, fraud, intimidation and other electoral malpractice that frequently undermined the credibility and public acceptance of elections, "if we institute a biometric registration and electronic voting system". Source: Daily Graphic