The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has proposed six election reforms following their rejection of the ones proposed by the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) after a two-day meeting to review the 2020 general election.

At a press conference, the Director of Elections for the party, Elvis Afriyie-Ankrah, stated that some of the reforms proposed by the EC, especially the closing of polls at 3:00 pm has the potential to disenfranchise many Ghanaians.

They, therefore, submitted their own review for the 2020 elections and has put forth their own reforms which they intend to engage the various stakeholders on, he said.

Explaining why the party did not submit these reforms at the IPAC meeting, Mr Afriyie-Ankrah said that the EC has turned IPAC from a consultative and consensus building platform into an information sharing platform.

He explained that the EC only comes to impose its decisions on IPAC without room for meaningful deliberations or allowing the exchange of ideas.

Also, NDC’s Communications Officer, Sammy Gyamfi, speaking on Top Story said that “if we had participated in this meeting, we would have stated our counter proposals and they would have dismissed it or subjected it to a vote.”

He bemoaned the fact that some dormant and largely unknown political parties were included in the review process.

“Political parties which did not participate in the election will be called upon to vote and some of these are mushroom parties some of whom did not participate in the election and have been invited to review it. Some of them don't even have offices in this country, and have been recruited by Jean Mensa and the NPP to do their bidding at IPAC.”

Sammy Gyamfi said that the party will write to the EC to discuss the proposals they have come up with.

Read NDC's proposed reforms below:

1. That, the participation of IPAC and its advisory role in the electoral process should be given legal backing, without encroaching on the constitutional independence of the Electoral Commission.

2. That, the EC adopts an equitable voting formula for political parties in IPAC deliberations based on their representation in Parliament.

3. That, the Electoral Commission complies with the use of the legally-prescribed Statement of Poll/Pink Sheet (Form 8A & 8B) provided for in our Election Regulations to prevent the omission of BVD entries so as to preserve the ballot accounting process and makes it possible to check multiple voting, ballot stuffing, impersonation and other forms of rigging.

4. That, the high rate of rejected ballots recorded in the 2020 general elections be addressed through the use of the appropriate ink pads and that same should be stipulated in our election regulations.

5. That, the EC employs and trains highly competent staff to accurately fill election result forms and collate results so as to forestall the reoccurrence of the widespread cases of arithmetic errors recorded in the 2020 general elections,

6. That, the Electoral Commission reverts to the time-tested election security arrangement where the deployment of security for election purposes is reserved to the Ghana Police service acting within a framework provided by the Electoral commission. This security arrangement should have minimum involvement of the military and no interference whatsoever by so-called National Security operatives, as recommended by the Emil Short Commission.

The party has constituted a committee to come up with a compressive document on electoral reform proposals and we shall share that with you in the coming days.