2024 elections: Publish results of every polling station on your website — IDEG to EC

The Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG) has called on the Electoral Commission (EC) to enhance transparency in the upcoming 2024 elections by publishing the results of every polling station on its official website before announcing the final tallies.

Kwesi Jonah, a senior research fellow at IDEG, emphasized that implementing this measure would strengthen Ghana's democratic process.

While acknowledging that Ghana's democracy is already considered one of the most stable globally, Jonah argued that adopting greater transparency would further solidify the country’s democratic credentials.

"We know that there are certain weaknesses, certain lapses in our democracy, and some of these weaknesses relate to the electoral process," Jonah said in an interview with the media.

He noted that the European Union, which has consistently observed Ghana's elections since 2012, has repeatedly recommended reforms to improve the electoral process.

One key recommendation is the publication of polling station results on the EC’s website.

Jonah explained that this approach would reduce the likelihood of political parties claiming that the election results were manipulated.

"There is no serious political party that can say that we don't have the results, polling station by polling station results, because our system of elections is such that at every polling station, there are two agents for the political party, one for the presidential candidate and one for the parliamentary candidate," he said.