Rejected ballots phenomenon, EC boss propose for scientific study for avert future occurrence

. Story: Benjamin Xornam Glover, Bolgatanga The Upper East Regional Director of the Electoral Commission(EC) Mr Bruce Ayisi has proposed a conduct of scientific study in the area of rejected ballots to ascertain the causes, effects and significance of the phenomenon in election management. Mr Ayisi, who made the recommendation at a regional review meeting of the 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections in Bolgatanga on Wednesday , stated this would allow for relevant interventions that would effectively minimize the incidence of rejected ballots in future elections. According to him, the high rates of rejected ballots that also re-emerged in the last elections affect the quality of voting in the sense that, those ballots do not add to the ballots that detremine the 'winners' or 'losers in an election and therefor void. "The situation is more serious when the number of rejected ballots outstrip the margin by which a winner in a parliamentary elections beats the run-up in the first past the post system in Ghana," he said. Mr Ayisi said although the 2012 elections passed as very peaceful and commended the security agencies and the people of the region for cooperating with the EC for successful elections, he said the region suffered from the effect of poor commitment and disloyalty of some polling staff who are not EC permanent staff and recommended that the EC should consider applying sanctions to both temporary and permanent staff of the commission whose conduct tend to undermine the integrity of the electoral process. Similarly, he said a reward mechanism could be instituted to honour hardworking personnel to serve as motivation for high performance. He called for broad consultation on the matter of polling agents who by thief roles part the polling station structure adding that such efforts should strive to build confidence among political parties, the polling agents and the EC to pave way for proper co-ordination of training activities to enhance performance. Mr Amadu Sulley, Deputy Chairman of EC in charge of Finance and Administration said the commission anticipated a possible breakdown of the biometric verification devices mainly because it was the first time such a system was being use, proposed that the manual verification process should be used side by side by the commissions critical stakeholders,-the political parties insisted on 'No Verification, No Vote' This, he explained created a big challenge that resulted in the disenfranchising of many eligible voters. Mr Amadu who is also the EC Commissioner for Upper East Region said failure by field officers to adhere to simple operational instructions such as the need to replace the batteries of BVDs every four hours, induced the numerous technical encountered on polling day. He gave the assurance that all issues raised would be critically and appropriately dealt with to in order to enhance the process in future elections. The Upper East Regional Director of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), Mr. Pontius Pilate Apabey since some voters would queue up many hours to the start of voting time and voting ends at 5pm coupled with the fact that counting in most rural areas continued deep into the night resulting in some difficulties suggested to the EC to amend the voting time from the current duration of 7 am - 5pm to 6 am - 4pm to which Mr Amadu said will require boarder consultation with key stakeholders. Some participants called on the EC with all its technical knowledge on election management to be firm and stick to its own rules and not allow political parties to dictate what to be done. Others also called for the resourcing of the NCCE to embark on voter education. Political Parties, with the expecting of the New Patriotic Party, (NPP) election officials, faith-based organizations, traditional rulers, civil society organizations and the media participated in the forum. It was organised by the EC, in collaboration with the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the KAB Governance Consult End Writer's email: benjamin.glover@graphic.com.gh