The National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) says it will, as a matter of urgency, commence research into why there was an increase in the spoilt ballots during the December 7, 2020, presidential and parliamentary elections in the country.
This, the commission believes will propel the country to arrest such occurrences in future elections.
Josephine Nkrumah, the Chairperson of the Commission told Citi News in an interview monitored by GhanaWeb that the NCCE is really concerned about the trend, which almost happens anytime the country goes to the polls.
“The Commission is going to take steps to find out what really contributed to this very large number of rejected ballots because in 2016, it actually went down but in 2020 there is a spike in the number of rejected ballots.
“So the Commission is worried about that and we will do further research into what went on,” she indicated.
The just-ended 2020 elections saw an increase of 313,397 ballots which were rejected and this representing a total of 2.333 per cent of total votes cast.
With this, the rejected ballots can best be described as being declared the ‘third force’ in Ghana’s multi-party elections.
These were ballots whose numbers continue to astound, despite measures put in place by the electoral body to address the problem.
This tally is, therefore, greater than the results of the nine other contestants combined. Together, the nine other candidates polled 175,691 votes, representing 1.339 per cent.
Find below statistics of rejected ballots in Ghana's election:
1992 – 149,813 (3.6%)
1996 – 111,108 (1.53%)
2000 – 119,362 (1.8%)
2000 (run-off) – 104,214 (1.58%)
2004 – 188,123 – (2.13%)
2008 – 205,438 (2.4%)
2008 (run-off) – 92,886 (1.02%)
2012 – 251,720 – (2.24%)
2016 – 167,349 – (1.54%)
2020 – 313,397 – (2.333%)
Josephine Nkrumah, Chairperson, National Commission for Civic Education