The Electoral Commission (EC) has indicated that the electronic transmission system adopted by the Commission for the transmission of the election results in the 2016 general elections may have been compromised.
The Commission’s Chairperson, Charlotte Osei, explained that the EC has thus advised its officers to resort to the manual transmission of results.
Addressing the press at the EC’s headquarters on Thursday evening, she revealed that “unfortunately we’ve had challenges with our electronic results system. We had reason to believe the system had been compromised and we advised our returning officers at the collating centres to stop using it and revert solely to the manual process.”
“So as we speak, we are still awaiting results through the manual process to come in and we are making efforts to make sure that we see that the polling station results before the final declaration,” Mrs. Osei added.
Her address followed the Commission’s decision, earlier on Thursday, to review election results from all the collation centres across the country to check reports of over-voting from certain polling stations.
The EC Chairperson stressed the need to be prudent and meticulous in the collation of the results as she noted the Commission owed it to Ghanaians to declare accurate results that reflect the will of the people.
“The history of our presidential elections in the fourth Republic of Ghana have been very close and because of that closeness, we have a duty to ensure that we take our time, we collate the results properly and the process of collation remains as inclusive and as transparent as the process of the elections.”
She further assured Ghanaians that the EC would not manipulate the results as “the results have already been declared on a polling station by polling station basis.”
“All we are doing is picking all those results that have been already been declared and putting it together. but in doing that, we must ensure accuracy,” Mrs. Osei stated.
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