The Electoral Commission of Ghana, after a week of successfully completing balloting for the seven qualified presidential candidates in the upcoming elections, have invited their representatives to witness the commencement of printing ballots and testament of polls forms. The printing was delayed because of lawsuits against the Electoral Commission and its Chairperson. Confirming details to Citi FM in Accra, acting General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr. John Boadu, mentioned he would be present for the printing exercise so as to ensure transparency. “Over the years we have never witnessed the printing of pink sheets or blue sheets or statements of polls, both parliamentary and presidential. We all know the kind of difficulty we had in court where the Electoral Commission was finding it difficult to know the number of statement of polls that they printed,” he said.
“It was so embarrassing and I do not think that we have to go through that again, so we wrote to the Electoral Commission requesting that we should be allowed to have access. They have granted that request and asked that we bring two agents to monitor the exercise.”
Last week, the Head of Communications at the Electoral Commission, Mr. Eric Kofi Dzakpasu, also mentioned in an interview with Accra-based Class FM about the Electoral Commission’s focus to work on the Notice of Polls and the printing of the ballot papers this week.
To also help curb the problem of rejected ballots, he mentioned the commission’s innovation of introducing new features on the ballot papers which are widened black borders to separate the candidates.
Full Article: Ghana Decides: Presidential Ballot Paper Printing Begins | Sahara Reporters.
