Bawumia exposes voter register discrepancies

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Created on Friday, 12 April 2013 00:00

Bawumia exposes voter register discrepancies

Mahamudu Bawumia, the 2nd petitioner in the Supreme Court case challenging the validity of the 2012 election results as declared by the electoral commission, has stated that the inability of the EC to provide an authentic voter register created opportunities for electoral malpractices such as over-voting and ballot stuffing.

With the petitioners challenging results from of the election at 11,842 polling stations, Dr Bawumia has revealed that the Electoral Commission, 2nd Respondent, inexplicably issued an inordinate number of ballot papers to these polling stations relative to the number of registered voters at the polling stations.

According to paragraph 24 of the main affidavit, “Whereas the declared policy of the 2nd Respondent (EC) for the 2012 elections was to issue each polling station with ballot papers of some 5-10% higher than registered voters, the evidence shows that, in 11,819 polling stations of the total of 11,842 (which includes the 23 unknown locations), 11,884,991 ballots were issued to 6,146,572 registered voters as per the 2nd Respondent’s voters register (the 14,031,680 version).”

This, Dr Bawmia noted, constitutes 93% more ballots issued than the number of registered voters in those polling stations, which contravenes the EC’s declared policy.

The main affidavit goes on to further reveal that the figures from the pink sheets for the 11,819 polling stations indicate that the total number of registered voters was 7,067,129.

However, the EC's voters register for these same polling stations indicate a voter population of 6,146,572, a difference of almost one million registered voters, (specifically 920,557).

“These irregularities create opportunities for electoral malpractices such as over voting and ballot stuffing,” Dr Bawumia has noted.

This revelation was contained in the main affidavit of the petitioners which was filed on Sunday as part of the evidence they intend to use to prove that Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party, should have been rightfully declared as winner of the December polls and not John Mahama, the candidate of the ruling National Democratic Congress.

According to the petitioners, there are six main categories of irregularities, malpractices, violations and omissions in various combinations which affected the results of the election in the 11,842 polling stations, which have irredeemably damaged a total of 4,637,305 votes in the process, and must, therefore, be annulled.

Source: thestatesmanonline.com