Electoral materials for the conduct of the December 7 presidential and parliamentary elections in the Eastern Region arrived over the weekend at the Regional Police Headquarters for sorting.
Present at the exercise were some regional and constituency representatives of the two major Political parties – the largest Opposition Party NDC and the ruling Party NPP as well as regional and district officials of the Electoral Commission.
The process was also monitored by the Police, BNI, and election observers from the European Union.
During the sorting process, some ballot Papers with duplicate serial numbers were detected.
The printing errors were identified during the sorting of Presidential and Parliamentary ballot papers for Akuapem South Constituency in the Eastern Region.
50 Presidential ballot booklets with a total of 500 ballot Papers were detected to have duplicate serial numbers, while two booklets for the Parliamentary election with 20 ballot papers had duplicate serial numbers.
According to the EC officials, the political parties agreed to decouple the duplicates by setting aside 25 of the booklets containing 250 ballot papers for the remaining 250 ballot papers to be used for the election.
He said the error will not affect the materials required for the conduct of the election in the Constituency.
The Director of elections for the NDC in Eastern Region Baba Jamal Konney said the party will ensure that the duplicate ballot papers are either burnt or kept in Police custody before the electoral materials are finally dispatched to the constituency so that it does not make it way to the constituency to create problems.
Apart from this abnormally, Baba Jamal commended the Electoral Commission for the transparent manner of the exercise.
The Eastern Regional Secretary of the ruling NPP Jeff Konadu declined the interview.
Source: Mybrytfmonline.com/Obed Ansah
