EC destroys Ahafo, Volta ballot papers with serialisation errors  

The Electoral Commission (EC) on Thursday afternoon, destroyed ballot papers from the Ahafo and Volta regions due to serialisation errors.  

The faulty ballots were incinerated at the Adipa Waste Management Centre near Nsawam in the Eastern Region. 

The destruction was overseen by political party agents, officers from the Ghana Police Service, the National Investigations Bureau, National Security, and journalists.  

27,414 Presidential and Parliamentary ballots from the Volta Region and 9,584 from the Ahafo Region were burned. 

After the exercise, all stakeholders signed a Disposal Certificate at the site.  

The EC had last week announced at an inter-party Advisory Committee Meeting in Accra that the ballot papers for the two regions would be reprinted after an audit revealed serialisation errors. 

The Commission clarified that Fonstat, the printing house responsible for the ballots, faced issues with its automated serialisation system and resorted to a manual process.  

Upon further review, the EC determined that the manual method was not reliable enough to ensure accurate serialisation. 

On November 16, 2024, the EC and political parties also shredded and burned the excess ballots and printing plates used for the affected regions. 

Mr. Asante Kissi, Deputy Director of Electoral Services at the EC, told journalists that the destruction of the ballot papers was to “protect the integrity of the ballot papers.” 

He urged the media to “report accurate information” and desist from using their platforms to propagate misinformation and disinformation.  

Mr. George Nkrumah, an agent for the New Patriotic Party, said the party was satisfied with the destruction of the affected ballots and commended the Commission for making the exercise transparent.  

Mr Abdul Malik Cheno, an agent for the National Democratic Congress, said the situation that resulted in the destruction of the ballots was “avoidable” and expressed fear that timeliness for the completion and distribution of the ballots to the two regions could be delayed.  

Source: GNA 

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