We'll research to figure out the cause of high rejected ballots in the 2020 election - NCCE

This was disclosed by the Chairperson of the Commission, Josephine Nkrumah, in a Citi News interview.

According to her, the commission is concerned about the disturbing trend, hence the need to investigate the cause and put in place mitigating measures in future elections.

“The Commission is going to take steps to find out what really contributed to this very large number of rejected ballots because in 2016, it actually went down but in 2020 there is a spike in the number of rejected ballots.”

“So the Commission is worried about that and we will be further research into what went on,” she added.

The efficiency of the NCCE has been called to question after figures from the 2020 polls show that 313,397 ballots were rejected by the Electoral Commission, representing 2.333 percent of the total ballots cast.

The rejected ballots exceeded the total votes polled by the third candidate in the polls, the Ghana Union Movement’s (GUM), Reverend Christian Kwabena Andrews, also known as Osofo Kyiri Abosom.

He garnered a total of 105,565 votes, representing 0.805 percent of the valid ballots cast in the just-ended presidential election.

The year 1992 saw the highest rejected ballots in the fourth republic with 149,813 representing 3.6 percent of the ballots cast.

In subsequent elections 1996 saw 111,108 rejected ballots, (1.53%), 2000 with 119,362 (1.8%), the 2000 run-off with 104,214 (1.58%), 2004 with 188,123 (2.13%), 2008 with 205,438 (2.4%), the 2008 run-off with 92,886 (1.02%), the 2012 with 251,720 (2.24%) and 2016 with 167,349 (1.54%).