Mr Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, the Director of Elections of the National Democratic Congress, has said the Party boycotted the inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting due to the bastardisation of that revered body by the leadership of the Electoral Commission.

He said the framers of the 1992 Constitution, in their wisdom, created the Electoral Commission as an independent institution to perform its constitutional functions without the control of any person or group of persons.

Mr Ankrah said the independence given to the EC was based on the presumption that it would at all times perform its duties conscientiously in the ultimate interest of Ghana.

He said one unique convention of Ghana's electoral system, which had become international best practice, was the IPAC, which sought to create a platform for consensus building on major issues affecting elections with the key stakeholders.

However, the Chairperson of the EC, Mrs Jean Mensa, and her team, had undermined those tenets of the IPAC, which was supposed to serve as a platform where political parties participated in all electoral activities throughout the electoral cycle, such as voter registration and exhibition of the register, Mr Ankrah said.

Over the years, the IPAC had served Ghana well as a platform where ideas were shared on various issues, before the EC took the substantive decision on critical electoral matters, he said.

Mr Ankrah said to promote transparency in the electoral process, the IPAC had been involved in the drafting of Constitutional Instruments on elections as well as procurement processes of the EC under previous chairpersons.

Speaking on the proposed electoral reforms by the EC, Mr Ankrah said the closure of polls at 1500 hours in the 2024 general election instead of the 1700 hours would not help the process because many people would be unable to vote due to the limited time.

He said the substitution of periodic mass registration with continuous all-round registration of eligible voters was not new, adding that the law required the Commission to put in place mechanisms to ensure that at any time that citizens became eligible to vote, they could be registered.

Mr Ankrah said introducing all-year round Voter Exhibition exercise through the use of technology was laudable, but could not be a substituted for the periodic exhibition exercise after voter registration.

He said the exhibition exercise was not just for verification but also to help clean the register by deleting names of dead people and other non-eligible voters.

He said this could not be achieved through the system the EC was proposing given the errors that occurred in the run up to the 2020 elections when the system was deployed and the fact that not all Ghanaians had mobile phones to assess it, hence it could not be a replacement for periodic Voters Register Exhibition.

Mr Ankrah said some preliminary proposals by the Party, which included the participation of IPAC and its advisory role in the electoral process should be given a legal backing, without encroaching on the constitutional independence of the Electoral Commission.

The Party also proposed that the EC adopted an equitable voting formula for political parties in IPAC deliberations based on their representation in Parliament.

Mr Ankrah said the Electoral Commission must comply with the use of the legally-prescribed statement of poll/pink sheet (Form 8A & 8B) provided for in the Election Regulations to prevent the omission of BVD entries, preserve the ballot accounting process, make it possible to check multiple voting, ballot stuffing, impersonation and other forms of rigging to protect the integrity of the ballot.

He said the NDC was also proposing that the high rate of rejected ballots recorded in the 2020 general election be addressed through the use of the appropriate ink pads and same should be stipulated in the election regulations.

He said the EC must employ and train highly competent staff to accurately fill election result forms and collate results so as to forestall the reoccurrence of the widespread cases of arithmetic errors recorded in the last election.

The Party further proposed that the Electoral Commission reverted to the time-tested election security arrangement where the deployment of security was reserved to the Ghana Police Service acting within a framework provided by the EC.

He said the Party intended to engage various stakeholders such as the media, civil society organisations, religions leaders, traditional leaders, development partners, the diplomatic community, and the public on their preliminary proposal.