Supreme Court Ruling On Collation Sheets Will Narrow Down Rigging Avenues In The Elections

The Let My Vote Count Alliance (LMVCA) welcomes the Supreme Court order for the Electoral Commission to make collation sheets available to political parties. LMVCA commends the petitioner, Mr. Kwesi Nyame Tease-Eshun, a former Director of Research at Parliament, for pursuing the matter in the court and for obtaining this judgment, which is a resounding victory for democracy in Ghana.

This Court ruling seeks to amend the CI 94, the law governing the 2016 elections, which made the collation sheets the exclusive preserve of the Electoral Commission (EC) because it did not require the EC to give the political parties copies of the collation sheets. The political party agents only had access to the pink sheets from the approximately 29,000 polling stations.

In view of the fact that the collation sheet is the most essential document, which captures the information from all polling stations in a constituency, denying the presidential and parliamentary candidates access to the collation sheets had grave repercussions, which could potentially compromise the electoral process and jeopardize our democracy. Without access to the collation sheets, political parties would have resorted to establishing internal structures to track the pink sheets from all the polling stations in a race to tally all the results before the EC, the sole custodian of the collation sheets, declares the election results. This would have been a recipe for chaos and electoral fraud in the absence of signatures from representatives of the political parties to validate the results on the collation sheets.

The Supreme Court ruling indicates that regardless of the independence of the EC, the judicial system is prepared to step in to uphold the constitutional objective of free and fair elections. The avenues for rigging elections have significantly narrowed. The Supreme Court ruling on Collation Sheets is a major victory for our democracy. Nevertheless, the greater difficulty of monitoring proceedings at the polling station remains. Political parties may be able to recruit 275 agents for the collation centres.

However, with no support from the state, it is an arduous task to recruit and train 2 polling agents and 2 counting agents for each of the 29,000 polling stations. LMVCA therefore urges all political parties to recruit agents who are persons of integrity, non-bribable, loyal to the candidate, literate and with a good appreciation of numbers. More importantly, LMVCA urges all Ghanaians who meet the above criteria to volunteer as political party agents.

In spite of the reforms that have been implemented towards a more credible election, it is incumbent on the political parties to take seriously their responsibility to ensure that the elections results are a true reflection of the votes cast at the polling stations.

Let My Vote Count.
Don’t Destroy Our Democracy!!!
David Asante (Convener)
0268220220
Ibrahim Adjei (Spokesperson)
0243338544
John Hall Acquaah (Dir. of Operations)
0268110110