Background

The 1992  Constitution of Ghana directs the Electoral Commission to treat the entire national presidential election as if it were a single constituency with the Chairman of the Commission as the Returning Officer. Thus, unlike the parliamentary election results which are independently declared at all the 275 constituencies, the presidential election results across the country are lumped together for eventual gazetting by the Chairman of the Electoral Commission.  The parliamentary election results, on the other hand,  are disaggregated into independent constituencies for eventual gazetting by the District Electoral Officers who are representatives of the Chairman of the Electoral Commission.

Regrettably, a number of disputes associated with the correctness of constituency presidential election result figures incorporated into the overall declared and gazetted presidential results has arisen since the inception of the Fourth Republic.

Many sources of these errors have been identified and reported over the years. Significant among them include transmogrifications of faxed figures from some constituencies to the "Strong Room" of the Commission during collation. Only recently, in the 2012 general elections, Hon. Adwoa Safoa, Member of Parliament for Dome-Kwabenya Constituency in the Greater Accra Region, with her vigilance and trained eyes, identified a whopping 15,000 (fifteen thousand) votes slashed from the votes obtained by the New Patriotic Party's presidential candidate in the constituency. In other instances the two leading parties, NDC and NPP, fell victim to such crude electoral discrepancies.

Interestingly these errors are almost nonexistent in parliamentary election results which follow a more decentralized model that allows internal auditing of all potential human errors prior to declaration of the election results.

The Way Forward

To minimize errors and doubts in the declared presidential election results, the IND will like to make the following recommendations for improvement of our future presidential elections in the country:

1. Similar to the parliamentary elections, the presidential election results should be independently declared at all Constituencies and the results gazetted and signed by the representative of the Electoral Commission, preferably the District Electoral Officer.

2. The constituency gazetted presidential results should be endorsed by representatives of all political parties involved in the election.

3. The gazetted results should be published on public or general notice boards at the District or Constituency Offices of the Electoral Commission.

4. Copies of the constituency gazetted presidential results should be made available to the political party representatives and also announced to the general public and the members of the press.

5. All the declaration stages should be in-camera and the recordings saved for future references. Copies of the recordings should be distributed to all political parties present at the collation.

6. The Electoral Commission will then aggregate all the gazetted presidential results from the 275 constituencies to produce the combined national presidential results which will then be declared, gazetted and signed by the Chairman of the Electoral Commission. Once the results have been gazetted at various constituencies, the overall results which is a mere arithmetic of the constituency results could be easily accomplished. The Commission will in essence be under no pressure of time or transparency to declare the national presidential election results. Other independent bodies including political parties could easily verify such results by aggregating the published results at all the constituencies in the country.

Conclusion

Presidential results, when processed taking into consideration the above recommendations, will no longer be threatened by the election results figure mutations that have plagued the country's Electoral system over the years.

By allowing constituencies to own their own electoral results, whether parliamentary or presidential, through decentralized gazetting, electoral flaws connected to the transfer of election results from the constituencies to the Central Office or Strong Room of the Electoral Commission will be totally eliminated.

An added advantage of such a system would be preservation of the original and unadulterated presidential and parliamentary results at the Constituency or District offices. Thus, the Constituency/District Office will serve as the repository of original presidential and parliamentary election results in such constituencies where disputed results could be verified and authenticated.