It’s Possible To Close Polls At 3:00pm In Subsequent Elections – EC Insists
The Electoral Commission has endorsed the Inter-Party Advisory Committee’s proposal to end subsequent elections at 3:00pm instead of the usual 5:00pm, saying it is possible.
The Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC), following a 2-day review workshop on the 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections, reached 16 resolutions aimed at improving subsequent elections.
Among the resolutions reached was a review of the time for closing of polls from 5:00 pm to 3:00 pm.
Speaking on Eye Witness News and monitiored by wontumionline.com, the Director of Elections at the Electoral Commission, Dr. Siriboe Quarcoo, stated that with the level of efficiency the country has attained, especially judging fromthe previous election, the decision to close polls at 3:00pm would be possible.
“After the election, we do an evaluation, the areas that we did well in, we sustain and try to improve on, and the areas we didn’t perform well in, we try to find better ways of doing it. We saw that in the 2020 election, most of the polling stations were done around 1:00pm. Also, in many countries in the world, voting closes as early as 3:00pm, and so it made us realise that with the efficiency we have put into the system, we can conveniently close the election by 3:00pm, then we can use two hours to finish the counting during the day to avoid doing it at night,” he stated
Meanwhile, the opposition National Democratic Congress, NDC, has shot down all the proposals made by the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) on the management of the country’s subsequent elections.
Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, the Director of Elections of the NDC, said the party does not agree with the resolutions.
Concerning the review of the time for closing the polls, he said, “NDC finds the proposal by the Jean Mensah-led EC to change the closing time of polls from 5:00pm to 3:00pm in 2024 baffling and mind-boggling. Since the 1992 elections, polls have always closed at 5:00pm. This has worked perfectly without any challenges whatsoever. It, therefore, beggars belief that the EC would want to change this time-tested arrangement and go for a poorly thought-through alternative which is bound to disenfranchise eligible voters and create needless problems for our electoral system.”