Ghana Decides launched a campaign yesterday, 27 November 2012, to get the Ghanaian electorate to turn up massively at the polls to vote on 7 December.

The campaign, called Our Vote, Our Voice, is the latest in a series of successful campaigns since February 2012, which commenced with #iRegistered, Ghana Decides Tag and SpeakGhana.

The purpose of the campaign is to promote communal voting. Campaign Coordinators, Kwabena Akuamoah-Boateng and Nehemiah Attigah, said “we believe peer-to-peer influence is still high and people could call up friends to vote or post updates to say #iVoted which may encourage others to vote.”

According to the Coordinators, “From our experience during the #iRegistered campaign, enthusiasm usually dies down after the first week or so. That is why the campaign is deliberately launched this close to the election.”

Project Lead of Ghana Decides, Ms. Kinna Likimani said “The Our Vote Our Voice campaign intends to use pledge cards to get people offline to pledge to vote. Much of our work has been focused on Ghanaians with limited or no access to internet, computers or smartphone devices, so this latest campaign is no different. We do not want to leave anything to chance come 7 December.” According to Ms. Likimani “Ghanaians must know that they have to vote because it is the in the interest of their children, their sisters and all of us. If you refuse to vote, it is like saying you don’t care about the people you love.”

However, the Coordinators admit the offline activity would be volunteer intensive, especially on targeted voters outside of Accra and are calling on Ghanaians to volunteers. Additionally, Mr. Attigah said “online pledge forms will be made live so that people can pledge to vote on December 7.  We’ll need you to pledge and got others to pledge too.”

The campaign will distribute Our Vote Our Voice branded t-shirts on Friday, 30 November, to all volunteers and participants in the campaign to whip up interest and excitement.

As part of efforts targeting Ghana’s growing tech-savvy community, voice notes and text messages have been designed and are ready for forwarding to users of Whatsapp & BBM. Currently, Ghanaians on Whatsapp and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are already using the logo as their profile pictures.

“We’ll be tweeting with the hashtag #LetsVote to encourage people to go vote and #GoVote on Election Day as well as #iVoted to share pictures after voting. The #GhanaDecides hashtag must trend on election day” says Mr. Akuamoah-Boateng