The Electoral Commission (EC) has announced its decision to adjust the closing time of voting for the 2024 general elections.
The voting will now end at 3:00 pm instead of 5:00 pm. The EC Chairperson, Jean Mensa, stated that this change is aimed at ensuring transparent and orderly counting of votes by electoral officials in broad daylight.
Mrs Mensa explained that this proposal is based on the lessons learned from the 2020 elections, where only 30% of voting centres recorded significant activity after 1:00 pm.
She added that this adjustment will help reduce long queues that have historically characterized elections and streamline the voting process for citizens.
Moreover, the EC intends to ensure that all polling centres have a voter threshold of 500 and below, as 70% of polling centres in 2020 had fewer than 500 voters.
Additionally, the commission plans to increase the number of polling stations nationwide.
Mrs Mensa was speaking at an inter-party dialogue and stock-taking conference organized by the National Peace Council in Accra on Thursday, December 14.
“We believe that this will go a long way to reduce the long queues that characterize our elections and allow for a smooth, seamless, hustle-free voting process. In 2020, it took voters not more than five minutes to cast their votes due to the introduction of this policy. Based on our 2020 experience and also feedback from several observer groups we propose to close the polls at 3:00 pm.
“Our experience in 2020 reveals that by 1:00 pm, 70 per cent of our polling stations were empty of voters as most voters had cast their votes. This made it possible because the threshold of most polling centres was reduced to 500 voters per voting centre.
“This was coupled with the robust verification devices that were deployed to the polling stations. We are convinced that by closing the polls at 3:00 pm, we will be able to count and collate in broad daylight and this will promote the needed transparency and orderliness that we so desire,” Mrs. Mensa said.
