Professor Joshua Alabi
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has accused the Electoral Commission (EC) of trying to rig the 2020 elections by printing excess ballots.
At an emergency press conference on Sunday, November 1, 2020, the leading opposition party alleged that one of the seven printing houses carrying out the printing of the ballot papers, Assembly Press, had printed about 150,000 surplus ballots.
That, the NDC says, is aside the five percent required excess ballot papers per polling station.
EC began the ballot printing process for the parliamentary and presidential Elections on Monday, 26th October 2020.
Addressing the media, the National Campaign Coordinator for the NDC, Professor Joshua Alabi, bemoaned that such irregularities would not be countenanced by NDC.
According to him, “By convention and practice, the EC prints an extra 5 percent of the total registered voters in each polling station to cater for spoiled ballots but what is surprising this time is that the EC is rather printing an addition 5 percent of the total registered voters per constituency in the total number of ballot papers to be printed. What this translates into is that more ballot papers are being printed in excess of the 5 percent extra ballot papers required for the polling station. From the ballot statistics from the printing houses as coming from the EC, we (NDC) have analyzed the figure from 13 regions and observed that there is an excess of over 150,000 ballot papers been printed beyond the extra 5% required.”
He noted that “This happened at the Assembly Press which is one of the contractors printing the ballot papers, and we (NDC) also found out that, the Assembly Press is printing additional ballot papers at a different location on the blind side of the agents of the political parties. The NDC is completely upset with the irregularities as the MD of the Assembly Press who is an appointee of the President was an aspirant who contested the NPP 2020 parliamentary primaries in the Nkawkaw constituency and the Convener of Let My Vote Count Alliance, a pressure group of the NPP.”
The seven printing houses are located in Accra.
By Melvin Tarlue