NPP raises issues with Pink Sheets
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) says it has observed that the Statement of Poll and the Declaration of Results forms, Form Eight, commonly referred to as Pink Sheets, are being printed without serial numbers.
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It said the printing of Pink Sheets without serial numbers was illegal and would form the basis for another court case after the election.
In a statement yesterday, the NPP said Aero Vote, the company which won the $8.95 million contract to print the Statement of Poll and Declaration of Results Forms (Form Eight) and other results-related carbonised election forms started the printing of the said forms.
It said some NPP officials went there to inspect the work and were surprised to be told by Aero Vote that they had been told not to emboss serial numbers on the Pink Sheets.
The statement said the contract for the printing of Pink Sheets made provisions for the printing of 3,000 extra forms and indicated that the idea was for each constituency to have 10 extra forms.
“Those 3,000 will naturally not have the polling station name and polling station code on them. Without serial numbers on them as well, we think this leaves them open to manipulation,” it said.
The statement said the NPP wanted to throw light on the matter of omitting serial numbers on the Pink Sheets quickly so that the Electoral Commission (EC) could take immediate steps to correct the serious anomaly for the forms being printed to conform to the law, CI 94.
“Time is not on our side. The election is three weeks away. We do not need another court case. Let us do what is right now to protect the national quest for credible and peaceful elections,” it said.
CI 94
The statement said the Public Elections Regulations, 2016 (CI 94) in the Schedules part on pages 48 and 49 had a sample of the exact format that the Law said the Pink Sheets for both parliamentary and presidential results should take.
It said material to the issue was that at the top left hand of the Pink Sheet, there was space for the unique serial number for each form to be inserted.
The statement said the Electoral Reforms Committee Report recommended that serial numbers must be embossed and be unique to each polling station.
That, it said, had been stated in the law governing the 2016 general election, CI 94.
EC Chairperson’s commitment
The statement said the Chairperson of the EC, Mrs Charlotte Osei, had said publicly that Pink Sheets would have serial numbers.
“We are, therefore, surprised to be told at the final hour of printing by those contracted to print that they have been instructed by the same commission not to put serial numbers on the Pink Sheets.
“This is not acceptable. It affects the integrity of the base document for the declaration of results,” it said.
The statement said the NPP had written to the Chairperson of the EC, requesting an emergency meeting of the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) to discuss the issue and other matters, including seeking complete clarity on what happens in the event of over-voting.
Recall
The statement recalled that the former EC Chairman, Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyan, could not explain to the Supreme Court at the election petition hearing of 2013 why the commission in 2012 instructed the printer to produce another set of at least 26,002 Pink Sheets, duplicating serial numbers.
It said the company which did the printing of Pink Sheets in 2012 through a sub-contract from a Ghanaian company, was this same Aero Vote, then a United Kingdom (UK) security printing firm, before it went into liquidation and closed down in 2013.
It said Aero Vote had since moved to Ghana, winning the contract for this year’s forms on its own steam as a Ghanaian company.