Petitioners challenging the outcome of the 2012 Presidential election results at the Supreme Court have re-affirmed duplicated serial numbers heavily influenced the outcome of the final results announced by the Electoral Commission(EC). The New Patriotic Party (NPP)in a press statement said the Petitioners argued that serial numbers are always unique to each pink sheet and any attempt to duplicate them has the tendency to affect the results. In a 174-page written address, the Petitioners argued that since the 1992 elections, measures have been taken to ensure election materials are safeguarded to avoid any fraud. They claim the EC had always tried to eliminate the element of fraud by taking stringent measures including pre- embossing materials for the election with unique serial numbers to specific polling stations. It was for that reason, according to them, that ballot papers are pre-embossed with serial numbers and why same is done with almost all election materials like ballot boxes, stamps and tamper proof envelopes. “It would, accordingly, be astonishing, if not self-defeating, where the primary record of the election, which are the pink sheets, on which results are declared, had no serial number as a security feature to prevent substitution or forgeries of such critical electoral materials”, said the statement. The Petitioners in their written address also raised questions with what they say was the Electoral Commission’s failure to give a ‘candid response’ to why two sets of pink sheets were printed and why the two were used in the election, though one set, the Petitioners argued, was more than enough for the election. They described as ‘disingenuous’ the EC’s explanation that the two sets of pink sheets were printed because they were unaware of the number of candidates at the time of printing.
Posted on: Fri, 02 Aug 2013 15:10:12 +0000
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