The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) has expressed concern over the high number of manual verification during Thursday’s Referendum on the creation of six new regions.
According to CODEO, instances of high manual verification give cause for worry when it comes to the credibility of the Referendum which was conducted by the Electoral Commission (EC).
The Referendum on the creation of the six new regions - Oti, Bono East, Savannah, Ahafo, Western North and North East – ended on Thursday with a massive endorsement.
Turnout in almost all the regions was above the required 50 per cent stipulated in the Constitution, with many exceeding the required 80 per cent YES votes.
Technically, these new regions have been created but Parliament will need to endorse it before their creation can come into effect.
The elections observer group, in its report on the Referendum, noted that manual verification is a backup plan for instances where there are challenges with the performance of Biometric Verification Devices (BVDs).
“CODEO observers witnessed wide disparities and unusually high numbers of manual verification across the polling stations. At some polling stations where counting of ballots and results declaration was observed by CODEO, the number of voters who were manually verified were found to be even more than the number of voters who went through biometric verification,” the report said.
CODEO added that “Per electoral regulations by the Electoral Commission (EC), manual verification is typically a back-up plan for instances where there are challenges with the performance of biometric verification. Given that observers generally reported smooth performance of the BVDs, it is still not clear to CODEO why unusually high numbers of voters were manually verified instead of biometric verification.”
The elections observer group called on the “Electoral Commission to urgently look into the circumstances leading to the extremely high resort to manual verification at the various polling stations were such developments took place.”
“This is particularly significant since such developments do not bode well for the achievement of credible electoral outcomes, as it becomes difficult to check fraudulent electoral malpractices such as multiple voting and ‘ghost’ voting,” the report added.
Meanwhile, the Minister for Regional Reorganisation, Dan Botwe says the government is happy with the success of the Referendum.
This joy, for him, is not exactly about the creation of new regions but the government’s ability to follow through with constitutional requirements, seeing to it that the people’s wish is granted.
See the full CODEO report below:
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Instagram
Google+
YouTube
LinkedIn
RSS