The IMANI Center for Policy and Education has petitioned the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to investigate the Electoral Commission’s (EC) handling of election-related equipment, following its retirement and disposal.
The center has also suggested that the matter may need to be referred to the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) for a corruption risk assessment.
IMANI’s Executive Director, Franklin Cudjoe, expressed concerns about the EC’s management of national resources, accusing the Commission of “misappropriation” and “wastage” of state assets.
The petition highlights the premature retirement and auctioning of thousands of laptops, digital cameras, printers, and fingerprint verifiers, which the EC deemed obsolete. IMANI claims these actions were motivated by a conflict of interest, possibly to conceal questionable procurement practices and suppress transparency.
Cudjoe emphasized that the equipment, worth tens of millions of dollars, was not uniformly obsolete, as the EC had repeatedly claimed.
He criticized the EC for failing to follow proper procedures, such as donating the equipment to other government agencies or selling it through transparent public tenders.
He also raised concerns over the disposal of sensitive voter information, which could be misused for malicious purposes, given the lack of proper data protection protocols.
