Respect My Vote Movement has discovered that 44% of Ghanaians knew that the Electoral Commission will declare wrong results in the 2020 elections.
In a pre-election survey conducted by the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) in September and October 2020, a significant whopping 44% of respondents in the survey believed that even though votes will be counted at the end of the 2020 polls, the Electoral Commission will declare wrong results. This development presents a clear and present danger to Ghana’s democracy.
In a situation where more than four out of ten Ghanaians believe that when they vote in an election, their votes will not count, there is a high likelihood that they wouldn’t participate in the electoral process at all, leading to apathy in the election. Even more dangerous is the fact that when election results do not reflect the vote of a majority of the electorates, this amounts to a subversion of the 1992 constitution which places sovereignty of the state in its citizens.
It is for this reason that the errors that characterize the collation and declaration of 2020 results must be a major concern for governance and election stakeholders including international election observer missions.
We are therefore calling on the Electoral Commission to explain to the people of Ghana what accounts for the differences in the Presidential election results declared on the 9th, 10th and the results gazetted on 15th December.
Apart from the fact that these errors create a credibility crisis for the Electoral Commission and the 2020 election.
The declaration of different sets of results had the potential of triggering post-election violence. We, therefore, call on stakeholders such as the National Peace Council, religious leaders, traditional leaders, as well as civil society organizations to join calls for a comprehensive audit of the 2020 Presidential and Parliamentary election results.
This, RMV believes, will provide Ghanaians the opportunity to correct mistakes associated with the collation of election results in the future.