Why Prisoner Enfranchisement Ought Not Be Our Priority

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

The question of whether prisoners are covered by the tenets of human rights principles, laws and regulations is a matter of course. What needs clarifying, however, are questions regarding the various categories of prison inmates and their rights and responsibilities as regards the franchise or the citizen’s right to vote. It is this fundamental element of citizenship that appears to be woefully lacking in the raging debate over whether Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Djan and Ghana’s Electoral Commission have adequately prepared the ground for prison inmates who so desire it to be able to vote in Election 2012 (See “Afari-Djan Explains Delay in Enfranchising Prisoners” MyJoyOnline.com 5/24/11).

Traditionally, the only stipulation governing one’s right to vote dealt with the mental health and age of the Ghanaian citizen. And depending on the era, the minimum age at which a citizen qualified to vote in a general election has vacillated between 18 and 21. On the question of mental health, this seems to have been pretty much up to local election officials and the opinion of the local community at large. In short, no psychiatrists and/or psychologists have been constitutionally mandated to certify the sanity of citizens desiring to vote. On the other hand, forms of identification indicating the age of a prospective voter have been routinely demanded by polling station attendants and officials.

The problem with the landmark Ghanaian Supreme Court decision of March 24, 2010, authorizing polling-booth access to all shades of prisoners irrespective of punitive classification or category, is the fact that by not making any distinctions between and among various categories of prisoners, this otherwise well-intentioned decision flagrantly undermines the reasons and purposes for which these confined categories of Ghanaians were legally deprived of their freedom of movement like the rest of the membership of the larger society. In other words, the simple argument here is that being a prisoner entails the subject of such incarceration having willfully and criminally violated at least some of the most significant rules and principles guiding social and cultural conduct in any civilized society. Consequently, in the opinion of this writer, only “political prisoners” and “prisoners on remand” may qualify to vote with the rest of law-abiding Ghanaian citizens.

Even more poignantly, it does not appear that the two lawyers who argued before the Ghanaian Supreme Court for a carte-blanche access of the franchise to Ghanaian prisoners fully appreciated the fact that a citizen’s right to vote is not an inalienable human right which automatically comes with the sheer accident of having been born to Ghanaian parents, or even having acquired one’s citizenship by the legal process of naturalization. Like the legitimate acquisition of a driver’s license, the right to vote ought to be determined by the fact of a citizen’s having conducted him-/herself with utmost discipline and social responsibility.

Consequently, those prisoners the nature of whose crimes is determined to be in breach of the civilized rules of discipline and social responsibility ought not to be allowed to vote. I have not done a thorough investigation or research, but the preceding fairly well appears to be what prevails here in the United States and most advanced democracies, Western and non-Western.

Now, on the question of categories of prisoners, I have elected to highlight “prisoners on remand” and “political prisoners” for obvious reasons. First, is the fact that prisoners on remand are “criminal suspects” who have yet to be afforded the due judicial process of either forensically proving their innocence – the preferred terminology here, of course, is “non-guilt” – or failing the same and thereby being effectively and legitimately classified as “criminal convicts” or “convicts.”

“Political prisoners,” on the other hand, generally fall into the proverbially gray margin of ideological opponents or dissidents. And in a democratic society such as Ghana’s Fourth Republic, most political prisoners are often such by virtue of having been brought up on charges of breaching codes bordering on peace and security. Such infringement of social rules of civilized conduct, of course, veers into an act of patent criminality when the culprit or culprits involved aim expressly for the removal, or overthrow, of a legitimately elected government, in which case these culprits become guilty of sedition which, in some cases, may be classified as a capital offense.

On the part of Ghana’s Electoral Commission, as clearly articulated by Dr. Afari-Djan, the commission’s longtime chairman, allowing prisoners to vote also necessitates the creation of modern prison facilities, on the part of the executive branch of government, that are capable of readily accommodating voting machines and the officials mandated and/or designated to operate the same. This latter element, implicit in Dr. Afari-Djan’s observations, is what the Ghanaian Supreme Court, in granting a blanket access of the franchise to prisoners, does not seem to have adequately, or perhaps even foresightedly, taken into consideration.

Likewise, as to whether in being effectively incarcerated the average Ghanaian prisoner has been afforded adequate access to the media and other educational facilities to enable her/him to make critically sound judgments, regarding which candidates are worth voting into office to manage the affairs of the people, has yet to be fully discussed nationwide.

As far as I have been able to determine, resources earmarked for prisoner enfranchisement could be better utilized in the area of violence reduction at traditional polling stations, as well as massive reduction in voter intimidation, as has become a virtual political fare in some regions and districts in Ghana.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and author of “The Obama Serenades” (Lulu.com, 2011). E-mail: [email protected]. ###