The Electoral Commission (EC) has described the election petition filed by the National Democratic Congress’ (NDC) John Dramani Mahama as incompetent.
The Commission, like the New Patriotic Party’s Nana Akufo-Addo, has thus served notice of its intention to urge the Supreme Court to dismiss the matter immediately rather than allowing it travel the mandatory 42 days.
The NDC leader is in the Apex Court asking that it annuls the election results that saw Mr Akufo-Addo declared as winner.
He argued that Mr Akufo-Addo benefitted from arithmetic errors and vote padding.
The EC is named as a defendant in the petition as required by law.
Lawyer for the Commission, Justin Amenuvor, has filed a 13-page response on the petition.
He argued that the EC Chairperson, in her declaration, inadvertently read out the figure representing the total number of votes cast as the total number of valid votes and the percentage of Mr Akufo-Addo as 51.59 instead of 51.295%.
This, the Commission says, was subsequently corrected insisting it did not affect the overall results declared.
On Techiman South which Mr Mahama argues if he obtained all votes, the NPP’s Akufo-Addo will end up with less than 50% plus one, the EC says the votes (results) it obtained from its officials do not support this view.
This result the EC says has been available even before Mr Mahama filed his petition.
The Commission says the allegations of vote padding are untrue.
It, however, admits that there is the possibility of minor discrepancies as a result of computational and mathematical errors made in the course of collation.
This the EC, however, says did not affect the overall results as declared.
The EC has noted in its response of its intention to raise an initial objection aimed at arguing that the case does not meet the minimum threshold required for a full trial to take place.
