Four out of five SRC presidential aspirants at the University of Ghana, have petitioned the school's Management against the use of an e-voting system for the upcoming SRC elections.

According to the aggrieved aspirants, the use of ballot papers is more credible that the proposed e-voting software, hence their call.

In a petition available to JoyNews, the four presidential aspirants, namely; Mr. Samuel Ackom, Mr. Martin Boakye Gyasi, Mr. Graham K. Oduro and Mr. Noah K. Womborbi argued that over the years, the electronic voting system has been characterised by issues of manipulation and compromise.

Citing the famous incident of the 2015 UGSRC elections involving a certain Mikdad Mohammed and Davis Ohene Fobi, the petitioners stated that the e-voting software does not offer the needed transparency in student elections.

This assertion was backed by the running mates of the four petitioners who also signed the petition: Ramzy Ahmad Fuseini, Lincoln Ohene, Benedict Bortsie and Ambruce K. Azasu.

"This planned engagement of an external software developer for the conduct of the upcoming UG SRC elections raises serious concerns. The first is about the protection of the integrity of the upcoming elections and the consequent violence that will erupt when the integrity of the elections is compromised.

We do not trust an external software developer to maintain the integrity of the elections should they provide the software for its conduct", portions of the petition read.

The petition continued: "Indeed, the UG SRC reverted to the use of external software developers for the conduct of its elections after several manipulations of election results in favour of candidates who would have otherwise not won their elections.

In 2015 for instance, an investigative report by the then Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) found that the software developed by an external developer for the conduct of the 2015 UG SRC elections had been programmed to rig the elections for one candidate regardless of the true results".