Abstract:
Vote-buying is a contentious issue in contemporary discourse on the sustainability of
democratic development in Ghana. This practice is gradually crippling electoral
processes and undermining the efforts of the electoral umpire in conducting
competitive, free, fair, and credible elections for the sustenance of democratic
development in Ghana. The main purpose of the study was to investigate the causes,
impact, and the prevention of vote buying in the Ablekuma Central Constituency
elections. To achieve the set objective, the study adopted the mixed method research
approach for gathering and analyzing data. In all 322 questionnaires were distributed
to respondents and six interviewees were interviewed for the study. The researcher
discovered that, the poorer a voter, the more likely he or she is to experience vote
buying, the perception voters have about politics and politicians is closely linked to
vote buying, voters sell their votes to politicians due to the perception they have about
them, vote buying is seen as a business. Politicians use monetary exchange, making of
huge promises, sod cutting and gifts to persuade voters to vote in a particular way.
The study also revealed that vote buying is a threat to democracy, hinders the honesty
of the electoral process, prevents development and promotes corruption. The
researcher therefore recommended that candidates caught for offences of vote buying
should be disqualified to be voted for and should also be treated as criminals as this
will help prevent vote buying.
Description:
A Dissertation in the Department of Political Science Education, Faculty of
Social Sciences, submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of
Master of Education
(Political Science)
In the University of University, Winneba.
DECEMBER, 2023
