At the Let the Citizens Know series held in Accra Monday afternoon (October 25), the EC described the claim by the former President as “false and untrue” and stressed that it was in the public interest for the police to initiate full-scale investigation that would require Mr Mahama to provide evidence to the claim he made.
The Deputy Chairman of the EC in charge of Corporate Services, Dr Eric Bossman Asare, who addressed the media, said an investigation into the matter would help to maintain public confidence in the country’s electoral process.
“The former President has said the EC thumbprinted one million ballot papers for the President of the Republic. This is untrue; and it is a great matter that undermines the credibility of the electoral system and should not be ignored.”
“We see that our silence on this matter has dire consequences on public confidence in the Commission, and we want the police to investigate it,” he stressed.
He also refuted five other allegations the former President made including the use of military to influence the election results; 2020 elections was the worst in the country’s electoral history; EC is responsible for the violence in Techiman South; the election was fraudulent; and the Chairperson of EC is running from accountability,” Mr Mahama said.
Former President Mahama said this at various fora during his “Thank You tour” of the country.
LET THE CITIZEN KNOW 25-10-2021
Updates on the 2020 elections and responses to some allegations
Good morning ladies and gentlemen of the Press. The Electoral Commission is very grateful for the support you continually provide in the dissemination of its programs to the good people of our dear country. More especially, we applaud you for your display of professionalism during the 2020 Presidential and Parliamentary elections. Indeed you helped the Commission to demystify all the processes in the elections from the registration of voters to the declaration of the results in all the 275 parliamentary elections and the presidential election.
This edition of Let the Citizen Know is aimed at providing an update on the 2020 elections and addressing a number of allegations that have been leveled against the Commission by the Former President who led the NDC in the 2020 presidential election. I will begin by providing a brief overview of the 2020 Elections.
Let me state that the 2020 elections have been hailed globally as transparent and successful for the orderly and efficient manner they were conducted in spite of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
The elections began with the replacement of an entire biometric voter management solution-the software and the hardware comprising Biometric Verification Devices and Biometric Voter Registration kits. It took the Commission only six months to conduct the entire electoral process from the preparation of a new biometric register on the 30th of June to the declaration of results on the 9th of December, 2020. This was because of the COVID-19 pandemic and yet the entire process came off without a hitch.
In spite of the projections of the spread of COVID-19 and deaths there was no spread of the virus. This was due to the stringent safety practices put in place by the by the EC. In all our 38,622 polling stations across the country, there was sufficient supply of PPEs throughout the entire electoral cycle.
We were able to register more than 17million people in just 38 days despite projections of apathy and low turnout due to the pandemic.
We ensured that our registration centers were placed at the doorstep of all eligible Ghanaians making it possible for any person who so desired to do so.
The recent 2021 Population and Housing Census have confirmed the effectiveness of our registration process. Out of a population of 30.8 million, 17 million plus were registered. This represents 55% of the population and puts Ghana ahead of all the ECOWAS countries except Cape Verde which has a population of less than 1 million. The average registered voters in ECOWAS countries is 40%. So Ghana has done well. Note that the registration took place in the midst of COVID-19.
To demystify the operations of the Commission and in the spirit of transparency and accountability, we organized weekly engagements with the citizens under the platform Let the Citizen Know. For the first time in our history Commissioners themselves provided regular updates directly to the citizens. As a result, the secrecy and suspicion that characterized our work was reduced. This helped build confidence in our processes and reduced the tension that surrounded our work and elections. For example, during the registration, the Commission provided regular figures on demographics to Ghanaians such as male/female ratio, youth, PWDs etc-So transparent was our process that anyone could on a weekly basis calculate the number of registered voters across board. This was not the case previously.
Again, in spite of the fact that this was an entirely new register, there were no incidents of missing names on elections day unlike previous elections when people went to the polling stations but could not find their names. The presidential candidates of the two major parties also attested to the effectiveness of the registration exercise.
For the first time in our history we were able to reduce the cost of elections per voter from $13.34 in 2016 to $ 7.70 in 2020 and saved over GHS 500 million or $90 million at a time when the cost of elections the world over was rising. The savings were made in spite of the purchase of huge numbers of COVID-19 items which were in no short supply in all the 38,622 polling stations and in spite of the fact that unlike in 2016 we paid full taxes on all our items. It is important to note that we also created an additional 10,000 polling stations.
This was achieved through prudent procurement processes which favored open, competitive tender rather than single and restrictive sourcing.
Again, for the first time, the elections were fully funded by the government of Ghana with no donor support.
Yet another first, we did not experience the long queues at our 38,622 polling stations as in previous elections. By 1pm most centers were near empty as voters had already voted well before the 5pm deadline.
Again, for the first time in our history, there were no shortages of materials anywhere in all the 38,622 polling stations. Even in advanced cities such as Berlin, in Germany, in a recent election, materials run out leading to delays.
Again we reduced the voting time from 10-12 minutes to 3-5 minutes.
Furthermore, we declared the results in a record 48 hours.
We created another layer of transparency and scrutiny by creating the Regional Collation Center. This enabled all the Party Agents to verify constituency presidential results for the second time before signing and forwarding them to the National Collation Center. We are reliably informed that the Agents at the RCC were professionals. NDC, for example, had seasoned lawyers at the RCC throughout the country.
It is important to note that that the introduction of the facial verification in addition to the verification of the fingerprints significantly reduced the percentage of manual verification. Previously this was a source of concern to the Commission. Of the over 13.4 million persons who voted, more than 99.9% were verified through either fingerprint or facial recognition biometric verification. An indication the Commission took the right decision to introduce the facial recognition feature to our verification process. Nationally only 11,050 people were manually verified. We are determined to ensure this statistically insignificant figure is further reduced in future elections.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, this in a nutshell provides the significant developments of the 2020 elections.
Distinguished citizens, in the last few weeks Former President Mahama has made a number of allegations against the EC and the 2020 elections. As Officials charged with the responsibility of conducting elections in Ghana, we owe it a duty to provide Ghanaians with the facts and the truth about the elections and the allegations raised. We are of the view that our silence on these false allegations could have dire consequences as it could undermine citizens’ confidence our dear country.
The Former President has said the EC thumb printed 1million ballots in favor of the president. This is untrue. This is a grave matter that undermines the credibility of our electoral process and should not be ignored. We call on him to provide evidence to support his claim. This is not a matter to be ignored and we call on the Ghana Police Service to investigate this.
The Transparency of our process makes it totally impossible for this to happen. At the polling stations, prior to the start of the elections, the empty ballot boxes are opened and displayed in the presence of everyone, and thereafter they are sealed. There are serial numbers on the ballot papers for each region and constituency. This is made known to the Agents before the elections. Our ballot papers also have security features; so any trace of new material will be clearly visible.
Again, at the end of the poll, the ballots cast are crosschecked against the voters who were verified and issued the ballot papers. This ensures that over-voting is detected immediately. Nationwide, we had no issue with over-voting at all our 38,622 polling stations except in Savelugu in the parliamentary election where there was one and I repeat one over-voting. The transparency of our processes from the beginning to the end makes this impossible. Ballot Stuffing cannot be done-it is impossible. We call on the Former President in the interest of our democracy to provide evidence of the stuffing of the ballot boxes by the EC.
The Police should investigate this as a matter of urgency due to its potential to derail and undermine our democracy, and lead to a lack of confidence in our systems and processes.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, the former President has alleged that the Military influenced the declaration and announcement of the elections results. This is also false. It never happened. Nowhere did the Military influence the declaration and announcement of results. It is not true. The 2020 processes were widely participatory. The media, local and international observers all participated in the elections.
The results declared and announced at all the polling stations and collation centers were a true reflection of the will of the people.
The Media and Observers also picked their data right from the ground directly from the 38,622 polling stations and the collation centers and the results were no different from what the EC declared. To buttress the fact that the results were a reflection of the will of the people, it is important to indicate that all the major networks-Peace FM, UTV, Adom FM/TV, Joy News/FM, Kessben, Sky, GBC, Atinka Media collated their own results and it was the same as what the EC declared. These networks called the election for the President before the EC declared. The parallel voter tabulation employed by CODEO also confirmed the results declared by the EC. We call on the good people of Ghana to disregard this allegation of the military influencing the declaration and announcement of results as it is false and untrue.
In the interest of our democracy we call on the Former President to provide evidence of where the influence by the Military occurred.
We have also noted that the Former President has called the 2020 elections the worst elections. We refute his scoring. The good people of Ghana who experienced our processes are the best judges. Their testimonies on social media demonstrated that Ghanaians were highly satisfied. Additionally, the 2020 elections have been hailed locally and globally as highly transparent, fair, credible, and inclusive.
World over, scientific methods are used to measure the success or