Kwadwo Afari-Gyan – Chairman of the Electoral Commission
Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC) on Thursday stated that no voting took place outside Ghana in the December 2012 General Elections.
He said Ghanaians working in Diplomatic Missions abroad, students on government scholarships and security personnel on peacekeeping duties who were registered abroad were assigned polling stations back home to come and vote.
Dr Afari-Gyan said this when he mounted the witness box to give his evidence-in-chief in the on-going election petition case at the Supreme Court.
The EC Chairman, who was led in evidence by Mr James Quarshie-Idun, Counsel for the Commission, explained that out of the over 2000 people whose names and particulars were given by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration only 705 people were registered to vote.
He said Ghanaians working overseas who had wanted to participate in the elections but for one reason or the other could not personally travel back home had the opportunity to arrange for a proxy vote.
Dr Afari-Gyan in his testimony also took the opportunity to explain the country’s entire electoral process beginning with the registration of voters, exhibition of the provisional voters register, printing of electoral materials, training of polling agents and the declaration of election results.
He said in Ghana the registration centres are used as polling stations and as such makes it easy for people to identify those polling stations during elections.
He said every polling station have a unique name and code which are consciously crafted and as such no two polling station have the same number.
Dr Afari-Gyan said polling agents of political parties are very important to the country’s electoral system since they are involved in every aspect of the electoral process.
The EC Chairman further revealed that voters who as a result of either a permanent or temporary trauma cannot go through the finger print verification machine are marked FO (Face Only) meaning they could vote through facial identification.
He said the number of voters in those category are about 70,951 far above the 3,196 assertion made by Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, the second petitioner during his evidence- in-chief.
He said the final registration figure that was used for the December 2012 elections stood at 14,031,680 and copies of this was sent to all the political parties.
Dr Afari-Gyan also explained that in theory of distribution of ballot papers, the EC is by law allowed to add 10 per cent extra ballot papers to every polling station.
He said in practice, however, the number could go higher because the ballot paper booklet are printed in categories of 100; 50; and 25 adding that it is unacceptable to break them into smaller units.
He cited an instance that the smallest polling station in the northern region had only four registered voters but it would have been out of place to remove only four pages out of a 25 number booklet and give to the official “so the whole booklet was issued to the officials”.
It is impossible to go strictly with the ten per cent threshold….a polling station whose total number of registered voters’ last two-digits is more than 25 is also given a 50 booklet, he said.
Source: GNA
