Re: EC won’t compromise elections

I have read with interest the above-published statement by the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), Jean Mensa, in the Daily Graphic of September 20, 2024.

Among other things, she stated that the EC was thoroughly cleaning up the provisional voters register, and that it was also focused on ensuring that no person who registered legitimately was disenfranchised.

She also emphasised, “the Electoral Commission cannot rig elections for any person  or party because Ghana has a very robust electoral system; from registration to voting and the declaration of the results.”

The EC Chairperson claimed she only declares results that have been signed and certified from the polling stations.

Notwithstanding all those laudable comments from the EC, Ghana’s election has been characterised by a number of challenges, among them rejected ballots.

There was a time when a winning Presidential candidate obtained about 40,000 votes against the opponent to become a winner, but the number of rejected ballots far outweighed that number.

In the 2020 general election, the number of rejected ballots were about 350,000 votes. And we think that election was healthy as claimed by the Commissioner?

I have personally drawn the EC’s attention to that seemingly serious anomaly, but that has always been ignored.

I believe the cause of the rejected ballots is the thumb printing the ballot with ink from an ink pad. In fact, before a voter goes through voting processes, the ink would have smudged on the roll rendering that vote bad, thus rejected during counting.

In that wise, I have proposed to the EC to scrap the ink-pad voting and adopt what I call the scratch or tear-off voting, where there would not be the need of any ink-pad.

Electronic voting could also be alright, but I think Ghana has not reached that stage yet, as most of our registered voters are illiterate.

Please let’s adopt a simple system like the scrap or tear-off voting that can be better for all manner of voters.

Elections can be volatile and therefore shouldn’t be a prolonged exercise.

John B. K. Amoah,
Researcher.