CODEO questions EC’s preparations towards district-level election

The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO), says if the Electoral Commission (EC) had printed electoral material weeks before the district-level election, there would have been no need to postpone the exercise in some polling stations.

National Coordinator of CODEO, Albert Arhin, said unlike the national presidential and parliamentary elections, district-level elections entail a lot more candidates; therefore more time is needed to adequately prepare.

According to him, in Tuesday’s election, it was clear that all the printing of papers were done in haste, as there were unpardonable mistakes.

“I have a feeling that maybe the printing houses; maybe did not receive the materials to be printed early enough or maybe in the course of printing they may have had some problems with their machine. So that might have accounted for the fact that they were not able to deliver for the elections to take place. Either the EC did not send the materials to them on time or they may have had problems with their machine. I  have not had any information about what happened but these are my suspicions,” he said.

Mr Arhin believes that if the EC had taken time to look through the papers, all polling stations would have voted.

“I was watching television this afternoon and I saw that some of the names for example if it is Kofi Arhin, it is Asabea Hagan who is under the picture. These are some of the mistakes. That tells you that the printing should have started way back to allow for mistakes that had been made to be corrected. This is what I suspect must have happened,” he added.

He added it was unfortunate that elections in parts of Ashanti and Central regions were postponed.