Addressing Public Concerns About Presidential Results Error – CODEO to EC

General news for Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Source: Class FM

2020-12-15

The Coalition of National Election Observers (CODEO) has said that although the calculation errors made by the Electoral Commission in the presidential elections that have just ended do not affect its estimates of Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT), it is important that the managing body Election Hold a public forum to address public concerns regarding the mistake the President made regarding valid votes in declaring the results.

In a statement issued by the Coalition on Tuesday, December 15, 2020 and signed by its National Coordinator, Mr. Albert Arhin, CODEO noted that the release of its 2020 PVT estimates has generated some interest and reaction from the public, particularly after of the EC press release of December 10, 2020 in which the Commission corrected certain errors in its previously announced official statement ”.

In response to questions and misconceptions about its PVT statement, the Coalition noted that: “In its December 10, 2020 press release, the EC stated that: ‘The Chairman of the Election Commission inadvertently used 13,433,573 as the total of valid votes cast. The total of valid votes cast is 13,119,460 ‘.

In addition, he noted that the Coalition “finds these computational errors by the EC very unfortunate, as they create room for doubt about the integrity of the results of the presidential elections declared by the Commission on December 9, 2020, and other results. contested parliamentarians “. .

CODEO said it is of the view that, “given the stakes, the EC should go beyond the passive publication of a press release to hold a public event to address the underlying issues regarding the identified computational errors. , in order to allay any lingering concerns and doubts. “

The group of local electoral observers also urged the “EC to guarantee that the source documents signed by the political parties, which support the declaration instrument, are consistent with the tally sheet for the comparison of the national results of the presidential candidates.” .

In response to whether the EC’s computational errors affect the Coalition’s Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) estimates, CODEO emphasized that “post-declaration errors detected and corrected by the Electoral Commission do not affect, in any way, Coalition PVT estimates as shared on Thursday, December 10, 2020. ”

“The PVT is based on the polling station data presented by CODEO’s stationary Polling Station Observers who witnessed the counting and declaration of those results, having observed the voting processes throughout the day.”

It went on to say that it has “absolute confidence in its PVT estimates, reaffirms the results it has already published, and assures the public that the results declared by the EC closely match the Coalition’s PVT estimates.”

He added that: “The final results published by the EC after correcting the errors detected in the original declaration are still within the confidence range of CODEO’s PVT estimates and therefore provide CODEO with the confidence to reaffirm his position in the PVT “.