Let's Do Some Math With Akufo-Addo

The Interpretation Of The Pink Results Sheet

…Let's Do Some Math With Akufo-Addo

By Margaret Jackson

February 26, 2013

There has been so much noise generated by the ex-leader of the NPP, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, since his humiliating defeat at the 2012 polls. Akufo-Addo, who has refused to go away quietly and behave as a man of principle has sown lies in the minds of the NPP supporters that he was cheated out during the elections hence his decision to go to the Supreme Court to contest the results.

But in his haste to prove his case or out of mischief or sheer ignorance or lack of appreciation for math or simple calculation, Akufo-Addo has gathered 11,916 pink results sheets and presented them to the Supreme Court to support his bogus claim that over 4.6 million votes are tainted and therefore must be thrown away to pave the way for him to be declared the president-elect.

What may be interesting for Ghanaians to know is that all the 11,916 pink results sheets gathered by Akufo-Addo were all from polling stations that the NDC won. Not a single pink results sheet presented by Akufo-Addo came from any polling station that he Akufo-Addo won. This is because Akufo-Addo falsely believes that there was not a single mistake committed by the Electoral Commission (EC) officials in any of the polling stations won by him and to a larger extent the NPP.

That is why I have decided to take Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo through some basic math to set the records straight and also to ease the minds of Ghanaians and to a larger extent some NDC supporters who are always bombarded by the loud-mouthed NPP communicators and serial callers on radio and television with claims that President Mahama’s victory was tainted.

Nana Akufo-Addo went to court with allegations ranging from more ballot sheets issued against the ballot sheets allocated, over voting, voting without verification and unsigned results sheets among others.

I will devote four days using some of the pink results sheets from polling stations won by the NPP to explain in detail what the issues are on those results sheets and allow Ghanaians to draw their own conclusions.

I will today devote my attention to the pink results sheet from the St. Joseph Primary Gungupa polling station in the Bimbila Constituency which was won by the NPP Deputy Minority Leader, Dominic Nitiwul. We have the polling station code as H083803.

If you look at the Section A on the pink results sheet, you will notice that we have 700 ballot papers that were issued to the St. Joseph Primary Gungupa polling station on the voting day with 652 people listed on Section B as the number of eligible voters in that polling station.

Yet when you go to Section C1 we see the Presiding Officer (Nashiru Iddrisu) making an entry error by stating that there were 755 people issued with ballots or who voted on the voting day instead of 577. This is just a simple entry error because when you jump to Section E which gives details of what each presidential candidate got in terms of votes, the details are clear and the numbers undisputable.

President Mahama got 97, Henry Lartey had 8, Nana Akufo-Addo 442, Paa Kwesi Nduom 3, Akwasi Addai Odike 0, Ayariga Hassan 2, Michael Abu Sakara Forster 2 and Joseph Osei Yeboah 3. When you total the numbers up it comes to 557. Just add the 20 votes that were rejected and the overall comes to 577. This is the detailed figures that EC officials in the strong room key into their system.

Yet the NPP which claimed that they went through all the 26,002 polling stations simply ignored the pink results sheet from St. Joseph Primary Gungupa polling station because it was won by Akufo-Addo. But whenever and wherever Akufo-Addo saw a similar error of entry in any polling station won by the NDC he jumped on it.

If the St. Joseph Primary Gungupa polling station had be won by the NDC, Akufo-Addo would have added it to his petition to the Supreme Court. Akufo-Addo would have stated that since 700 ballot sheets were allocated to that polling station on voting day but the returning officer erroneously stated that 755 instead of 577 voted on that day, then what it means is that there was over voting at the St. Joseph Primary Gungupa. This is Math 419 according to Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

What baffles me is that anytime Akufo-Addo and his henchmen came across this error, they brazenly refused to check the numbers or details on Section E of the pink results sheet to see how it looks like. That is why Akufo-Addo has jumped to court with some false calculations and a false sense of hope, thinking that 4.6 million votes have erroneously been added to President Mahama’s and therefore has to be thrown away.

The NPP claims that they went through all the 26,002 polling stations, yet all the errors they found were restricted to polling stations won by the NDC. But we have tens of thousands of these simple entry errors in all the constituencies won by the NPP. And one basic fact that I strongly want to drum home is that all returning officers are supposed to fill out Section C on the pink results sheet even before the votes are counted. This means that there can never be any collusion since before the first vote is even counted Section C must be filled out by the returning officers.

One would therefore, want to find out if the NPP folks deliberately ignored these same errors in their strongholds because they thought that bringing them up may also raise questions about the numbers Akufo-Addo got? Do we have an integrity issue here?

In this world what is good for the goose is equally good for the gander. Therefore, if the NPP truly believe that there were errors that would clearly affect the outcome of the 2012 Presidential Elections, why then did they restrict their expose to only polling stations that were won by the NDC? Were they trying to hide something? If yes, we would like to know.

A grade 6 student who looks at the St. Joseph Primary Gungupa pink results sheet displayed can easily go through and determine that there were no extra votes added to either Akufo-Addo or President Mahama’s, therefore the 755 number that we see on Section C1 does not mean much and as a result does not call for the invalidation of the results from that polling station. Reason being that the total number of votes that we see on Section E comes up to 577 and not 755.

My beloved readers, please when you examine almost all the issues that Akufo-Addo has raised concerning more votes on election day as against the ballot papers allocated to the polling stations, you see these same basic errors tweaking through them all.

On the St. Joseph Primary Gungupa pink results sheet, we have an NPP agent who went through it, certified it as a true reflection of what happened on that day before appending his signature. The NDC and PPP agents also did same. Therefore, if Dominic Nitiwul thinks that, that error at the St. Joseph Primary Gungupa in his constituency is normal and does not affect the details of the results at Section E on the pink sheet, why then would Nitiwul call for the invalidation of results in polling stations with that same kind of errors that the NDC won?

Are we trying to be fair? Are we trying not to take anybody for granted? I mean, are we trying not to lead supporters and voters astray? You can run away from the truth for a while, but you can never hide from it forever.

I will pause and leave readers to thoroughly analyze what I have said and brainstorm with others till they hear from me again.

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