Ghana announces electoral reforms ahead of December polls

Ghana's general election in December will be run under far-reaching electoral reforms, the chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC) has said.

Charlotte Osei said the National Results Collation Center (NRCC) will be introduced to replace the famous EC Strong Room.

"There will be the National Results Collation Center where we have all political party agents there and candidate agents. The collation will be done in an opener and more transparent manner," Osei said.

"We have all the cameras there so you can all see even from your homes as the results come in."

She said there would be one collation center in each of the 275 constituencies to collect results taken from the polling stations, with the EC ensuring that each center be manned with very knowledgeable collation officers.

According to her, results will be transmitted electronically to the national collation centers, and the digital results will serve as a comparison to the manually counted version for discrepancy checks.

She added that in their quest to have very knowledgeable professional bodies assist in ensuring the integrity of results, the EC has worked with the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) and Institute of Chartered Accountants, Ghana (ICAG).

"We think it will be beneficial to have another layer of checks; you have the lawyers checking that the forms are properly filled and properly signed off and you have the accountants also making sure that the numbers have been added up properly," she explained. Endit