Dr. Kwame Asah-Asante, a political science lecturer at the University of Ghana, has voiced scepticism regarding the Electoral Commission's (EC) proposal to close polls at 3 PM instead of the usual 5 PM in the upcoming district assembly elections.

Describing it as a challenging task, he expressed uncertainty about how the commission plans to implement this proposal.

Dr. Asah-Asante cautioned the EC against potentially disenfranchising eligible voters due to the early closure of polls.

He emphasised the need for the commission to ensure a fair and uncompromised electoral process.

The Chairperson of the EC, Jean Mensa, proposed the early closure, citing the intention to allow electoral officers to collate votes in broad daylight for transparency and orderliness.

“It is a difficult thing and I don't know how they want to handle this. My advice to them is that if for nothing at all, they should be able to make sure that we have an election that is not compromised in any way. For instance, we don't want to see any group of people who, because of this decision, are going to be disenfranchised, that will not bode well for the elections that we are going to have in 2024.

“We also want to have a situation where the problems that previously we had, this decision will not compound them, we expect nothing but an improvement over the past experience to usher us into a new election that is free from all the evils that rear their ugly heads in democracies where there are difficulties and where sometimes it creates problems,” Dr Kwame Asah-Asante stated in a 3news.com report.

The upcoming district assembly election, mandated by the District Assembly Elections Act 1994 (Act 473), is scheduled to be held on December 19, 2023, spanning across the entire country.

The election will give the electorate the opportunity to elect assembly men and women and unit committee members for the various electoral areas.

What EC Chairperson Jean Mensah said about the closure of polls

“We propose closing the polls at 3pm rather than 5pm. In 2019, we announced our decision to close the polls at 3pm rather than 5pm, in the 2020 Elections. Nonetheless, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic and the stringent, and necessarily time-consuming safety protocols we instituted at our polling stations, we were compelled to put this proposal on hold."

“Over the past months, however, this proposal has re-surfaced from various sections of the public, and indeed, our own experience from the 2020 Elections has revealed that it is a workable proposal, as by 1pm, most polling stations were empty, suggesting that this is a workable proposal. Therefore, this is a reform we intend to put forward,” she said.

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