EC: Mistaken figures from Eastern Region was an oversight

The Electoral Commission (EC) has explained that the rise in total number of votes collated in the Eastern Region for both the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) was due to the late addition of figures from the Ayensuano constituency.

Reacting to former President John Mahama’s claims that the EC had ‘cooked’ some figures, the EC’s Director of Elections, Dr Serebour Quaicoe, said it was an oversight, which was duly corrected on time.

He also debunked Mr Mahama’s allegation that the presidential results, which were collated and signed in the Eastern Region by all the political parties, were not the same ones that were transferred to the EC’s head office in Accra.

Oversight

Dr Quaicoe said no one from the EC had been manufacturing figures or had tampered with the election results, indicating that there had not been any deliberate effort to deprive any political party of their votes.

Again, he stressed that when collating results there are some minor mistakes and challenges that come up, but the ideal situation is to identify them and make them reflect the actual results.

“So speaking with our regional directors, that was what they did. It wasn’t deliberate. They had finished with the regional collation and made it public before they realised that votes from the Asuogyaman (later corrected as Ayensuano) constituency has not been included and so they added it. Based on the figures from the constituency every candidate had an additional vote,” he said