The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers has said it is confident that the results of the 2016 Presidential polls declared by the Electoral Commission (EC) are the accurate reflection of how Ghanaians voted in the December 7 polls.
In a statement signed by Professor Miranda Greenstreet and Justice VCRAC Crabbe, joint Chairpersons for and on behalf of the Advisory Board, CODEO stated that: “The official result announced by the Electoral Commission for each candidate falls within their respective Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) confidence ranges.”
Professor Miranda Greenstreet stated that CODEO could confidently confirm that their PVT estimates were consistent with the official presidential results as declared by the EC. She noted that their findings estimated a 44.32% of the total ballot cast for the NDC and 57.75% for the NPP, while the official result of the EC showed 44.40% and 53.85% for the two political parties respectively, leaving a slight margin of 1.25% and 1.29% respectively.
She added that their “observers also reported that the main two [political] parties, NDC and NPP, had party agents at over 99% of polling stations and that at over 99% of polling stations,” both of the two “party agents signed the official declaration of polls.”
She indicated that, the PVT technique, which was first used in the Philippines in 1986, had been deployed successfully in many other countries around the world to promote electoral integrity and it helped to guard the rights of citizens to vote and to protect such right when exercised.
She stated that the technique involved the transmission of reports about the conduct of voting and counting as well as “the official vote count as announced by election officials at polling stations” to a “central election observation point using text messages.”
She said that this technique was employed to “independently verify the accuracy of the presidential election results as declared” by the EC. Also the PVT of CODEO had a voter turnout estimated rate of 69.33% with a plus or negative 0.48% margin of error, which was very close to the 68.62% declared by the EC, she said.
The organisation also commended President John Dramani Mahama and all the other presidential contestants for conceding defeat and called on all the political parties to “reduce the winner-takes all tendencies” in our politics.