Tsatsu Tsikata is lead lawyer for the petitioner
Lead lawyer for petitioner in the 2020 presidential election petition today highlighted four different figures used by the Electoral Commission at different times as the official total valid votes cast in the December 7 vote.
According to Tsatsu Tsikata, petitioner John Dramani Mahama as of today did not know the exact official tallies.
“We still as at today cannot tell the correct figures on the basis on which an official declaration has been made, we cannot tell.”
Mr Tsikata did a breakdown of the different figures from December 9 till the most recent one which was contained in the EC’s response to the petition on January 9th.
GhanaWeb takes a look at the different figures and how they came about, and or were amended.
13,434,574 – This was the initial figure declared by EC chairperson Jean Mensa on December 9th when president Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo was announced as winner of the polls.
13,119,460 – This figure was given by the EC as an amendment of the earlier figure. The commission explained that its chair had used total votes cast instead of total valid votes cast in the declaration.
13,433,573 – Despite having declared 13,434, 574 as total valid votes cast, when the EC came to correct the mistake, it introduced a new figure which was 1,001 votes less than what was declared on video.
The amendment statement said the chair had “inadvertently used 13,433,573 as the total valid votes cast. The total valid votes cast is 13,119,460. This does not change the percentages stated for each candidate and the declaration made by the Chairperson.”
13,121,111 – This is the fourth variant of the total votes cast. This figure was contained in the EC’s response to the petition as filed before the Supreme Court on January 10th.
The EC chair emphasized the 13,121,111 figure as the official figure in her witness statement filed on January 20th.
She said: “A tabulation of all Valid Votes obtained by all 12 Candidates as declared by the [EC] on 9 December 2020 and captured on Form 13 adds up to a total of 13,121,111.”
