The Republic of Sierra Leone held its multi-tier elections on June 24, 2023, to elect a president, members of parliament and members of the local council. The election was the fifth in the country since the end of the civil war in 2002. Thirteen political parties contested the presidential election, but the landscape was dominated by the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) and the main opposition All People’s Congress (APC). A total of 3,374,258 Sierra Leoneans were registered to vote in the election, an increase of 195,595 from the 2018 elections.
On Election Day, videos showed enthusiastic citizens at various polling stations across the country chanting in Krio, ‘wi wan vote!”, as the electoral commission struggled with early deployment of election materials.
The National Election Watch (NEW), a coalition of local and international organisations in Sierra Leone with a common objective of supporting credible and peaceful elections, deployed over 6,000 election day citizen observers across the country and they observed that as early as 6:30am, voters were on the queue at 88 per cent of polling stations, but voting did not start until 10am across several polling units visited due to the late deployment of materials.
A total of 101 of the polling stations visited by the African Union Election Observation Mission (AUEOM) opened late due mostly to the late arrival of polling materials in 70 of polling units. The AUEOM also observed poor preparations by polling officials.
Independently verified data by NEW that deployed the Process and Results Verification for Transparency (PRVT) election observation methodology revealed a high level of citizen participation in the process.
The PRVT is an advanced and proven election monitoring methodology used by citizen election observation groups around the world that allows for the independent and impartial assessment of the quality of election day processes and the official results.
According to NEW’s PRVT Data, voter turnout was between 75.4 per cent and 79 per cent, although this was at variance with the 83 per cent turnout as released by the Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone (ECSL).
Voter turnout in Sierra Leone’s June 2023 elections was higher than the August 2022 general election in Kenya, which had its lowest voter turnout in 15 years.
Albeit a higher voting population than Sierra Leone, 65 per cent of the 22.12 million registered voters in Kenya turned up to cast their ballots. In the Gambia’s 2021 presidential election, voter turnout was 89.34 per cent, the total number of registered voters was 962,157.
Voter turnout was contrastingly worse in Nigeria’s 2023 general election, where there were widespread expectations that voter turnout would be significantly higher than in previous elections given the increase in the voting population – from 84 million to 93 million – and the heightened interest in the elections by the country’s young voters. In the end, national turnout for the presidential elections was 26.7 per cent.
It is important to reflect on what drives citizens to vote and account for the high levels of voter turnout and citizen participation in countries such as Sierra Leone and the Gambia with smaller voting populations compared to countries with higher voting populations such as Kenya and Nigeria.
Today, electoral management bodies (EMBs) around the world also use new technologies with the aim of increasing citizen participation and improving electoral processes. These improvements focus on voter registration, results transmission, and management.
Citizen participation can be improved through increased use of electoral technologies to guarantee the integrity of the elections and increase trust and confidence in political systems.
According to Yiaga, Africa’s pre-election observation (PREO) report technological innovations in the Electoral Act have increased voters’ anticipation that the process will be more transparent to guarantee the integrity of the elections.
The deployment of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and INEC Election Result Viewing portal in Nigeria’s 2023 general election leveraged the use of electoral technology to enhance the transparency and credibility of the elections.
Despite the limited use of electoral technology, especially in the results management process, the Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone used a mobile application to transmit polling data to expedite the processing of results in line with Section 7(2) of the Public Elections Act (2022).
At the Regional Tallying Centres, the commission also deployed the use of technology to tally all the results electronically.
There are two issues that always characterise electoral technological innovations – the huge public expectations and the limitations of technology. Legislation on the use of technology in various electoral acts must also clearly spell out the use of electoral technologies to prevent any ambiguities in the deployment of these technologies and manage the expectations of citizens.
As technology improves, the demand for electoral technology to provide alternatives that can improve trust and reduce the inconveniences associated with electoral processes will continue to mount.
While African citizens in 24 countries where elections will be held in 2023 will be concerned about their right to vote, we should also be concerned with how the votes are counted and the results are managed.
In Sierra Leone, the ECSL Result Management System was equipped with two architecture modes: online and offline modes. The online mode allows the system to efficiently receive result data from mobile devices at the polling stations. In this mode, the initial entry of result data takes place at the polling stations using the mobile tally application. While offline, votes were also physically counted at polling stations and electronically tallied at the district and regional tallying centres led by the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone (ECSL), which manages the country’s national elections.
The integrity of an election is measured by the transparency, fairness, accountability and inclusivity of its processes and actors. The levels of civic and citizen participation, the introduction of electoral technologies and the management of results must undergo continuous improvement to avoid mistrust and enhance confidence in the electoral process.
These improvements include strengthening the capacity of electoral staff that are deployed on Election Day, ensuring transparency and allowing for public scrutiny of election technology and ensuring easy access to key information of public interest.
Ibrahim Faruk, is Yiaga Africa Programme Manager [email protected]
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