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The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has accused the Ashanti Regional Director of the Electoral Commission of undermining electoral laws and being a threat to the nation\u2019s democracy. <\/p>\n
According to the Deputy Director of Elections and IT for the NDC, Dr. Rashid Tanko Computer, the Ashanti Regional Director of the EC, ahead of Monday\u2019s Special Voting exercise, issued a directive preventing agents of the NDC from putting their seals on ballot boxes containing electoral materials. <\/p>\n
Speaking in an interview on JoyNews, Dr. Tanko explained that political parties, in ensuring the integrity of elections, are allowed to place their seals on ballot boxes containing electoral materials before distribution to polling centres. <\/p>\n
He alleged that the situation, however, was different in the Ashanti Region, where the EC director had issued a directive to stop the NDC from placing their seals on the ballot boxes. <\/p>\n
\u201cI am saying he gave instructions. He told them that the NDC should not put a seal. When I confronted him, he asked me, \u2018If we have 400 ballot boxes, are you going to put seals on all of them?\u2019 And I told him, \u2018If you bring 1 million ballot boxes, I will put 1 million seals. That\u2019s what the CI says,\u2019\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
According to Dr. Tanko, it had to take his escalation of the matter to the Deputy Commissioners of the EC before the regional director backed down. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey had to call him, and he finally backed down. But by then, some districts were already operating under his initial orders,\u201d he bemoaned. <\/p>\n
He further accused the Regional Director of allegedly instructing electoral officials not to share the serial numbers of validation stamps with party agents. This, he also noted, contravened CI 127, the regulation guiding elections in Ghana. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe CI is very clear,\u201d Dr. Tanko-Computer said. \u201cBefore voting begins, Part A and Part B of the pink sheet must be completed. Part B includes the validation stamp number, which must be recorded to ensure that any stamp not matching that number during sorting can be identified as foreign material. Yet, the Regional Director ordered that this information should not be shared with our agents,\u201d he alleged. <\/p>\n
In response to the allegation, the Director of Elections for the NPP, Evans Nimako, described the claims by the NDC as exaggerated. <\/p>\n
\u201cSealing of ballot boxes is done at multiple levels\u2014starting from Accra at the printing houses to the regional and district levels. If Tanko-Computer\u2019s agents missed sealing at one point, they should simply rectify it at another,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Ahead of Ghana\u2019s general election scheduled for December 7, 2024, the Electoral Commission of Ghana conducted a Special Voting exercise to allow election officials, security personnel, and media practitioners to cast their ballots early. <\/p>\n
A total of 131,478 voters, representing 0.007 percent of the total registered voter population of 18,741,159, were expected to participate in the Special Voting exercise. The exercise began at 0700 hours and ended at 1700 hours. The exercise was initially scheduled to take place across 328 centers nationwide but was rescheduled for eligible voters in the Western and Eastern regions following the recall of ballots for the two regions. <\/p>\n
GA\/EK <\/p>\n
You can watch today\u2019s compilation of the Twi news below:<\/b> <\/p>\n