Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO), a non-governmental election observer organization, has launched its fourth electoral vigilante roadmap with an announcement that it will recruit, train and deploy 4,000 observers on voting days during the 2012 elections in December.
The observers, according to CODEO’s Co-Chair; Justice V.C.R.A.C Crabbe, will be undertaking the two-pronged activities of doing observation on Election Day and what CODEO terms Parallel Vote Tabulation.
Of the 4,000 observers to be deployed, 1,200 will be Rapid Response Observers, who will in addition to regular monitoring duties, use SMS technology to transmit results from their polling stations to the CODEO Information Centre to feed the organization’s parallel tabulation database.
The parallel tabulation exercise is aimed to equip CODEO with adequate information to confidently verify the 2012 Presidential results.
Launching the Ghana Election observation campaign under the theme: “Ghana’s Election 2012: Civil Society Intervention Towards Peaceful and Credible Elections”, Justice Azu Crabbe, who co chairs CODEO with Mrs. Miranda Greenstreet, said the organization’s activities will cover three broad periods: pre election, Election Day and the Post Elections period.
This year’s round of observer activities tallies up as the fourth for CODEO since it started election observation in 2000. Sponsorship for the entirety of the observation activities is from the USAID.
In the pre-election period, Justice Crabbe revealed that CODEO had already organized a number of preparatory activities for its internal staff. This include training its secretarial staff, convening advisory board meetings, appointment of a national coordinator, activation of working committees and holding a general meeting for its member organizations.
CODEO has decided to run a nine-month pre-election observation program from March to November 2012. The program is to help build a transparent and confident environment that is conducive for this year’s elections. The pre election activities will cover preparations towards the election day, such as the biometric voter registration, political parties’ campaigns, voter and civic education, as well as activities by the civil society groups.
From April, CODEO will begin a long term pre election monitoring. The Coalition will recruit, train and deploy 50 long term observers across the country. These observers will prepare monthly monitoring reports.