USAID expands voting in secret to Ghana's visually impaired

Citizens in a democracy expect to enjoy certain fundamental rights. One such right is the right to vote in secret, a cornerstone of democracy. Many developing nations, like Ghana, face daunting challenges as they strive to carry out free, fair and inclusive elections. Yet the best African electoral systems rarely extend the right to vote in secret to citizens with disabilities until Ghana 's December 2004 election. The practice in Ghana had been that visually impaired citizens had to depend on another to cast his or her vote.

The development of the tactile ballot folder, a cardboard cut-out guide that allows non-Braille literate visually impaired voters to mark their ballots secretly and independently, created an opportunity for the inclusion of the visually impaired citizens in Ghana . The U.S. Government through USAID provided support to the Ghana Association of the Blind which registered visually disabled voters and organized district-level trainings in all ten regions. Participants learned to use the folder in hands-on training and received valuable information on what to expect on election-day. This support resulted in over 180,000 people exercising their right to vote in secret in the December 2004 national election.

The right to vote is universal, and every vote counts. Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African country to have a national election in which visually-impaired voters received the opportunity to vote in secret throughout the country.