Special voting was used to duplicate results – Gloria Akuffo

A member of the petitioners’ legal team, Gloria Akuffo, has asserted special voting was the vehicle used to perpetuate massive irregularities that formed the basis for declaring Mahama as President.

Early on in court there was disagreement on whether pink sheets were used to record results from special voting.

The petitioners debunked claims by the Electoral Commissioner that results of special votes were first entered on pink sheets before being transferred onto the collation sheet.

The petitioners said the Electoral Commission’s manual on elections did not show anywhere that results from the count should be entered on pink sheets as the E.C claimed.

They referred to page 8 of the regulations:

“Results of the count should be recorded separately in both parliamentary and presidential collation form 8....in the space provided like any other polling station”.

Gloria Akuffo, a former deputy Attorney-General used the post-court interview to explain the thrust of the petitioners' cross-examination on day 30 of the hearing of the Presidential Election Petition.

She said the premise of the petitioners' claim was this;

“Whenever you found any violation, irregularity or malpractices you are likely to find the problem of duplicate pink sheets”.

She explained that in many instances, two pink sheets had the same serial numbers and same polling station names but with different results, a development she said was highly irregular.

According to her, the attempt by the EC to use special voting to explain the anomaly cannot be accepted because for special voting there is no pink sheet involved.

According to the E.C, results of special voting were not counted on the day of the vote, but it was sealed only to be counted at the collation center on the day of general elections.

Whilst acknowledging this procedure, she said a collation sheet had polling station code name and number, but the special vote results form had none of this. This was because the form for special voting came embossed with the print ‘special vote’ and nothing else, she explained.

In the end, the special votes are transferred onto the collation sheets directly without the use of pink sheets which would have a code number or name.

The petitioners believe this is an unusual trend because with regular votes the pink sheets recorded the results.

In the end, “when you find a pink sheet with duplicate numbers [results], then something went wrong”, she suspected.

But spokesperson for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Nana Ato Dadzie provided an explanation for what the petitioners believe was an anomaly.

He said Dr Afari-Gyan had thoroughly explained that where different results emanated from the same polling station, it was because of special voting.

He said the authoritative explanation given by Dr Afari-Gyan "as the man mandated to run elections" should be weightier than the analysis presented by the petitioners.

Special voting is used for categories of persons whose services would be needed on voting day and, would therefore, be unable to cast their votes. They include the security services.