The High Court Judge, Maneul Bart-Plange Brew, who ordered a rerun of the Kpandai Parliamentary election, has explained that the scale and nature of the irregularities uncovered in the pink sheets made it impossible to isolate the problem to just the contested stations.
He said evidence presented by both sides showed numerical inconsistencies, conflicting tallies, illegible figures, unexplained cancellations, and discrepancies between the EC’s pink sheets and the petitioner’s copies—irregularities he said “went to the roots of the results.”
The judgment has been criticised by the NPP, with the minority in parliament questioning how a petition about 41 polling stations resulted in a rerun of 150 polling stations.
The Judge in his written address noted that, even within the 41 pink sheets tendered, several entries showed significant mismatches. One pink sheet recorded 1,422 votes in a column that did not correspond with any related figures, while in other instances, the EC’s version of results differed markedly from those held by the petitioner.
In Kpalung Primary School, for example, the EC’s pink sheet recorded 261 votes in a slot where the petitioner’s version listed 325.
He stressed that if such errors could arise in the 41 sheets scrutinised in court, the court had “no way of knowing” the extent of similar irregularities in the remaining 111 polling stations whose pink sheets were not part of the proceedings.
Judge Brew further pointed to the destruction, loss, or unavailability of certain electoral materials, including BVD machines and original collation documents, which made cross-verification impossible.
He criticised what he described as the Electoral Commission’s “tainted” copies, marred by “interpolations, deepened ink, cancellations” and handwriting irregularities that rendered the records unreliable.
The court also noted procedural concerns during collation, including the relocation of the collation centre to Tamale without notice to the petitioner, conflicting accounts of when violence disrupted the process, and the absence of key officials during parts of the tallying.
Judge Brew wrote that while even one vote can be decisive, dismissing discrepancies running into the hundreds as “trivial” would compromise electoral justice. He argued that scientific arithmetic leaves no room for such fundamental mistakes, especially from a constitutionally mandated body like the EC.
“The pink sheet recordings raise substantial questions as to what has happened,” he said, adding that the court could not “whitewash” the inconsistencies or assume the remaining unexamined stations were free of similar problems.
He concluded that because the errors were potentially widespread and the court could not rely on incomplete or inconsistent documentation, the only lawful remedy was a full rerun in every polling station in the Kpandai constituency.
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