The opposition New Patriotic Party says it is unhappy with the Electoral Commission’s (EC) intention to electronically transmit election results during the December 7 polls. The party believes the electronic mode of transmission failed in other countries including Kenya, Ecuador and Mexico, hence should not be adopted in Ghana. According to the party’s 2016 Campaign Manager, Peter Mac Manu, the e-transmission process fails to address the critical challenges that the reform process seeks to overcome. He further argued that there is no law which gives the EC power to electronically transfer results. “The E-transmission of results does not in any way control the abuse of the electoral process. It does not address foreign ballots and it is an after the fact process. If there are only 800 voters on the register how will the system prevent transmission of results cast in excess of that number? If the EC was really serious about transmission of results, it should have backed that with legislation. No constitutional instrument supports this radical shift. There is no law which gives EC the mandate to electronically transmit results. Nothing in the law before Parliament makes mention of it.”
According to him, the law rather talks about the “EC receiving all the collated results from the statement of poll and declaration of results and pink sheets signed by party agents at the constituency level and the expectation is that they will be brought to the national collation centre before the winner of the presidential race will be declared.” Mr. Mac Manu suggested that the “focus of the EC should rather be on ensuring that a certified copy of the pink sheet from each of the 29,000 polling stations is brought to the national collation centre before the Chairperson of the EC finally declares the winner.”
Source: citifmonline
