The Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG) is urging the Electoral Commission (EC) to publish the results of all polling stations before declaring the final results of the upcoming 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections.
Ghana’s presidential polls have witnessed electoral petitions at the Supreme Court in recent years based on allegations of faulty processes at polling stations.
The Electoral Commission has also been criticised for declaring the 2020 election results twice due to result tallying anomalies.
To prevent such occurrences, which IDEG deems a threat to the country’s democracy, the institute recommends that all polling station results should be be published on the EC’s website.
Senior Research Fellow at IDEG, Kwesi Jonah, acknowledged that although Ghana’s democracy is ranked as the sixth most stable in Africa, it is essential for the EC to adopt these measures to improve the country’s position.
“We know that there are certain weaknesses, certain lapses in our democracy and some of these weaknesses relate to the electoral process.
“The European Union which since 2012, has consistently observed elections in Ghana has always come out with certain recommendations to help us to reform in order to fast track our democracy and not to backtrack it.” “One of them has to do with the publication of polling station by polling station results officially on the websites of the Electoral Commission,” he said.
