Don’t Compare District Elections to National Elections- EC

The Electoral Commission (EC) has thrown more light on the conduct of district-level elections and national elections, proclaiming the former as complex and challenging due to the number of areas and candidates involved.

In an interview, the Deputy Chairman of the Commission in charge of Corporate Services, Dr Bossman Asare stated that the complexity of the district-level election reflected in the 2023 edition.

“We have it in 12,500 places, different electoral areas and units,” he said, adding that 8 to 10% of that figure makes up the national election.

“They are two different types of election and that of 2023 is more complex. Every electoral area, you have candidates for assembly and unit committee. But in the national elections, the whole of Ghana is for one constituency and for Parliamentary, the whole of Ghana you are looking at 276 different elections,” he said in an interview on Eyewitness News monitored by opemsuo.com.

Justifying the challenges despite earlier promise of a high-class election in the Assembly Members and Unit Committee Member election which took place in December 2023, he said, “We had some technical challenges. You can make your projections, you can do your estimation, you can plan but along the line, you can face certain challenges. Anyone who compares the two basically doesn’t understand the two kinds of elections.”

His response was prompted by concerns about the EC’s abysmal performance in the district-level election and its recent decision to implement some major reforms in the upcoming presidential elections.

The district-level election in 2023 was forced to be postponed in a number of areas over the late arrival of electoral materials and other challenges.