- What is the constitutional process for announcing the winner of the elections?
- Does an official ORAL or VOICE declaration by the Electoral Commission (EC), even if there was a “patent error” or confusion of the “total valid votes” and “total votes cast (the latter which includes rejected ballots by the way)”, have any validity in law?
- What are the Gazetted results as contained in the “Declaration of President-Elect Instrument, 2020 (C.I. 135)”; and does the total percentage of the VALID VOTES CAST exceed 100% for all the candidates, thus making this a mathematical and statistical impossibility?
- The oral declaration made on 9 December 2020 by the EC may have been “wrongful” based on the EC using the “total votes cast” instead of the “total valid votes” as the basis (denominator for computing the percentages won by each of the candidates. However, was this anomaly subsequently corrected in the WRITTEN/PAPER documentation that was subsequently Gazetted on 10 December as per the “Declaration of President-Elect Instrument, 2020 (C.I. 135)” issued under the hand of EC Chair, Mrs Jean Adukwei Mensa?
- Did the Gazetted results as contained in the “Declaration of President-Elect Instrument, 2020 (C.I. 135)” include that of Techiman South Constituency, and to what extent does this change the outcome of the elections in terms of the percentages gained by the candidates?
- Would the presidential election results, as declared and gazetted in C.I. 135, be statistically different, assuming a representative random sample of the 38,622 polling stations pink sheets were collated? This is particularly important because, as I understand it, the unit of counting/analysis in presidential elections is the polling station, not even a constituency or region.
Addendum: I am not a lawyer, but I think these are some of the issues the Court will consider in their ruling. Some of the answers can also be found in the “Declaration of President-Elect Instrument, 2020 (C.I. 135)”. The core of the constitutional argument and likely ruling of the Court will lie in Article 63(3) of the 1992 Constitution, which provides that: “A person SHALL NOT BE ELECTED as President of Ghana unless at the presidential election the number of votes cast in his favour is MORE THAN FIFTY PERCENT (50%) of the TOTAL NUMBER OF VALID VOTES cast at the election.”
Lastly, I think the EC must provide answers to the Supreme Court and citizens on why they changed the “total votes cast” between their first declaration and subsequent amendment BUT failed to provide a rationale or basis for this. That is, which polling stations, constituencies and or regions contributed to the errors, thus necessitating the subsequent changes. In essence, these changes were made without any explanation and lacking full transparency, even if they MAY NOT have materially affected the said declaration.