Review rule on over-voting – Ofosu Ampofo to EC

The Director of Elections for the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Samuel Ofosu Ampofu has called on the Electoral Commission to review its rule on over-voting.

Mr. Ampofo argues that the reform, if not reviewed might create problems on election day.

The Electoral Commission (EC) earlier rolled out some reforms as part of plans to safeguard the credibility of the election.

The reforms included a redefinition of what constitutes an over voting incident at any polling station.

The EC Boss has explained that there would be over-voting incident at a polling station when the number of ballot casts exceed the number of people verified to vote.

But speaking on Eyewitness News, Mr. Ampofo wondered how that particular reform will be effected, saying there is a high tendency of people mischievously “creating a situation of over voting.”

“If for instance an electoral officer who is in charge of the tearing of the ballot paper decides to in collusion with one party or the other, give two ballot papers to somebody to vote and the person succeeds in putting two ballot papers into the ballot box which has been verified only once, then what that means is that at the end of the day, we will have more than one ballot paper than the number of people who have been verified , which means that according to the decision of the Electoral Commission results have to be nullified.

“So the question is how do we check whether people would not mischievously decide that this is the strong hold of another party so I must deliberately cause a situation which will result in over voting and then the results will be nullified.”

Mr Ampofo therefore asked the EC to review that particular rule to avoid any hitches on election day.

By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana