Director of Legal Affairs of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Abraham Amaliba has entreated the Electoral Commission (EC) to heed the advice of former Commissioner, Dr Afari-Gyan to reduce the number of collation centres in the country.

Speaking at a forum to mark 60 years of the political science department of the University of Ghana this week, Dr Afari-Gyan noted that there is a positive correlation between increased collation centres and voter manipulation, hence the need to desist from adding further and reducing the current figure.

“Voter tabulation sounds like a simple and straightforward activity, however, examples from recent elections will indicate that collation centers are the most vulnerable points in manipulating election results. So it is not desirable to set up many collation points in the results management process.

“Each collation centre represents a point where results can be corrupted wilfully or through mistakes. Also, the more collation centers there are, the more difficult to track changes and results," he said.

Sharing his view on Dr Afari-Gyan's comment on the Big Issue on TV3 Friday, June 16, Mr Amaliba noted that there is the likelihood for tampering should results be commuted from the constituency to the region.

"The second collation center is clearly supposed to allow for mischief. A second collation Centre which is the regional collation center is a recipe for fraudulent acts. That is where the cheating takes place.

When you transmit the results from constituency to the region, the likelihood of tampering will take place," he said.

According to him, officials of the Electoral Commission most at times engage in electoral malpractice.

"You have officials of the EC, whom if you are not vigilant could change your results for you. Results have been changed at polling stations in this country," he added.

Source: The Independent Ghana