The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) has called on the Electoral Commission (EC) to hold a public event to address the computational errors that were detected in its initial declaration of the 2020 Presidential Election results.
According to CODEO, the press releases being issued by the EC to clarify the errors have not helped to clear the air of doubt surrounding the integrity of the Presidential election results declared by the Commission on December 9.
In a press statement signed by its National Coordinator, Albert Arhin, “CODEO is of the view that, given what is at stake, the EC must go beyond passive publication of a press release to hold a public event to address the underlying issues with respect to the computational errors identified, so as to allay any lingering concerns and doubts.https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d8rF09zaK9l1TPVkcFcewJjixP21VZ5N/preview
“In addition, the Coalition urges the EC to ensure that source documents signed by the political parties, which support the instrument of declaration, are consistent with the tally sheet for the collation of the national results for the presidential candidates,” the statement said.
CODEO’s statement follows the EC’s press release on December 10 clarifying errors in the presidential election results declared on Wednesday, December 9.
The statement acknowledged that the EC Chairperson, Mrs Jean Mensa “inadvertently used 13,433,573 as the total valid votes cast” instead of 13,119,460.
“This does not change the percentages stated for each candidate and the declaration made by the Chairperson,” the statement said.
Meanwhile, CODEO was quick to point out that the EC’s errors had no effect on its Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) estimates.
According to the statement, despite the changes done by the EC after detecting errors in the original declaration, the final results still fell within the confidence range of CODEO’s estimates.
“CODEO has absolute confidence in its PVT estimates, reaffirms the results that it has already published, and assures the public that the results declared by the EC closely match the Coalition’s PVT estimates,” it assured Ghanaians.