₦airaland Forum

The ability to alter an election results from a polling unit should be reserved to only the election tribunal and the courts.

No single individual or group of individuals should be allowed to alter results from polling centers under any circumstances.

Collating centers should only be allowed to add results as they come from polling centers and not be allowed to alter result sheets.

He can borrow ideas from the proposal below:

https://www.nairaland.com/8520342/nigerian-electoral-law-reform-proposal#136863389

To further enhance transparency of our electoral process, party representatives should be given a copy of the result sheet of each polling unit. This will prevent cooking of results to derail the will of the people.

We can greatly reduce the number of deaths of our fellow country men and boost confidence in the electoral body by making election process as fair and transparent as possible.

Democracy remains a good hope for Nigeria and making the process as transparent as possible should be aspiration of everyone.

Politics of democracy could actually benefit a people if done the right way. Today, many Nigerian youths are growing frustrated and blame bad leadership as the cause of their problems. If the people have confident in elections, we will see more qualified Nigerians willing to participate.

Below are a few amendments to our electoral laws I wish to propose.

1. Separate days for days for presidential, gubernatorial and other elections. The presidential elections should be held on a separate date as well as gubernatorial elections. This will help to narrow down focus on those who perpetuate electoral violence.

2. INEC should conduct all elections. State electoral commissions are just under the weight of the governor in power and usually just a show when they conduct elections.

3. Local governments should serve four year term and a maximum of two terms just like the president and Governors.

4. Elections should hold minimum seven months before swearing in date. This gives time for all pending court cases to be concluded.

5. There is no need for appeal court to hear election disputes as the Election tribunal is already an appeal court, cases should go straight to Supreme Court from the election petition tribunal.

6. There should be a screen to display results from all polling units used during the election. There is no need for several returning officers. Election results should be displayed on the screen and should have the following data: Total number of accredited voters, total number of votes, total number of rejected votes and number of vote of all participating parties in the elections, results should be transmitted directly to the score board by INEC’s appointed official relating with polling units officer. We need to do away with cooked results coming from states to alter the will of the people.

7. A political party that has not won a seat at the local government level should not be allowed to participate in elections at the state. Also, a political party that has not won an election at the state level should not participate at the federal elections. If parties must merge, for the new party to participate in presidential election, they must all have won elections at the state level for example. Defection is not a criteria.

8. All ballot papers should have a unique serial number. All accrediting officers must have a unique serial number. All polling units must have a unique serial number. All three numbers must appear on the ballot paper after accreditation. For example, accrediting offer A123 has ballot papers 00001 to 00090 and assigned to polling booth AFFX, accrediting offer A124 has ballot papers 00091 to 00100 and assigned to polling booth ABFX. This order is known only by INEC authority and can be used to fish out fake ballot papers.

9. Ballot paper should be structured as below. The box for thumb printing is to reduce thumb prints going into another party box leading to invalid votes.

10. Ballot boxes should be of glass and transparent.