Yesterday, November 15, 2024, the Electoral Commission decided to reprint ballots for the Ahafo and Volta Regions in an effort to guarantee a high degree of professionalism and to uphold international standards at every stage of the electoral process.

The Commission’s audit procedure, which was implemented at all printing houses in charge of producing ballots for the 2024 elections, served as the basis for this.

The producing House that was producing the ballots for Ahafo and Volta had run into a number of issues, according to our audit. The ballots were printed without any problems, but there were issues with the serialization process, which was meant to be completed by an automatic system that would generate serial numbers based on a sequence. Consequently, the Printing House implemented a manual procedure to cover the gaps, according to the EC.

After conducting more analysis, the Commission concluded that the manual approach was not infallible and could not be depended upon to provide a precise serialization of the ballots.

Taking into consideration the aforementioned, the Commission decided to reprint the ballots and notified the political parties during an emergency IPAC meeting on Friday, November 15, 2024.

Buck Press and Acts Commercials will be responsible for reprinting the ballots for the Ahafo and Volta Regions, respectively.
The impacted ballot papers will be torn up and burnt, as has always been the practice.

Agents from the political parties will observe both actions, and they will sign and provide a destruction certificate.
“The public should be aware that the EC Team, which was based in the aforementioned Printing House, alerted the Commission to the difficulties with serialization, and the Commission’s Audit Department verified this information. Despite the fact that their agents were present at all times, no Political Party, either publicly or informally, informed the Commission of the difficulties with serialization at the Printing House. Only the findings from the EC Team at the aforementioned Printing House, as well as confirmation from its Audit Department, supported the decision to discard the printed ballot papers.