The former National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Peter Mac Manu says the claim by former President John Mahama that the Electoral Commission printed additional one million ballots for the 2020 general elections is bogus.

Speaking on Newsnight on Joy FM, he said that there is no solid evidence to prove this claim. 

“If anybody understands the content of the pink sheets you would know that it is impossible for anybody to dump thumb printed ballot papers outside what the EC brought to the polling station. People should not be talking loosely like that. It is bogus and we should not be accepting this at this point in time in our democracy,” Mr Manu stated.

The 2020 Campaign Manager of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) added that evidence of EC burning printed ballots ahead of the election is not proof that ballot stuffing happened during the elections.

“I am not accepting such a possibility in the election (when it comes to ballot stuffing). Tell me the actual thing. What actually happened? There is before election issues, voting day issues and post voting issues. You don’t have to combine them,” Mr Manu added.

This comes after former President John Dramani Mahama alleged that many things went wrong during the 2020 presidential and parliamentary election.

Among other things he stated that the military invaded collation centres and forced Electoral officers to declare results while some one million extra ballot papers were printed after the printing exercise. 

“This is one of the worst ever elections we've had in Ghana. So many things went wrong,” he told the Eastern Regional House of Chiefs and the Clergy in Koforidua as part of his thank-you tour to the Region on Tuesday, October 12.

Responding to the assertions, the EC called on John Mahama to provide proof to his claims.

According to the EC, although they believe the claims are false, allegations of ballot stuffing can undermine the credibility of the electoral process and thus should not be ignored.

"The former President has said the EC thumb printed 1million ballots in favour of the president. This is untrue.

“We call on the Former President in the interest of our democracy to provide evidence of the stuffing of the ballot boxes by the EC. This is not a matter to be ignored and we call on the Ghana Police Service to investigate this,” Deputy EC Chairperson Dr Bossman Asare said.

He stated that the transparent processes employed made it totally impossible for overvoting or ballot stuffing to happen. 

Meanwhile, Mr Manu believes that taking into account the pandemic the electoral commission did extremely well in organising the 2020 elections.

“Even in this country many people were pushing for the elections to be postponed but they stood on their ground that there is nothing in the constitution to make that decision.”