Electoral Commissioner to declare winner of Runoff

Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, Electoral Commissioner, would at 1100 hours on Saturday declare the winner of the 2008 Presidential Election Runoff following the successful conduct of the Tain constituency elections on Friday. 
    Dr Afari-Gyan on Tuesday declared results in 229 out of 230 constituencies that gave Prof. John Evans Atta Mills, candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) the lead.
     He said because of the closeness of the results, voting was to take place in Tain Constituency on Friday, January 2, 2008 before he would declare the winner of the 2008 Presidential Election Runoff.
     Dr Afari-Gyan said the results from 229 constituencies that had been certified by the EC, gave Prof Mills 4,501,466 votes representing 50.13 per cent of total valid votes cast while Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Presidential Candidate of New Patriotic Party (NPP), garnered 4,478,411 votes, representing 49.87 per cent.
     He said mathematically the results from the Tain constituency could affect the outcome of the Runoff because the number of voters in the constituency was more than the difference between Professor Mills and Nana Akufo-Addo.
     Dr Afari-Gyan explained that the difference of 23,055 votes could not give Prof Mills the presidency since the number of registered voters in the Tain constituency was 54,718.
     Explaining why voting could not take place in the constituency on December 28 2008 in an interview on an Akan Speaking radio station in Accra, on Friday, Dr Afari-Gyan explained that Officers of the Electoral Commission discovered that the ballot papers they were distributing to the various polling centres were running out because of a miscalculation.
     He said the practice of the EC was to send 10 per cent more ballot papers to every polling centre to cater for those that would get spoiled in the course voting. He said when the Officers started distributing the ballot papers they did not take into consideration the fact that some of the ballot papers had been used during the special voting.
     As a result they discovered that they were going to run out of ballot papers when they were getting to the end of the allocation.
     He said when the Officers realised the problem, they decided to reduce the allocation of 10 per cent of additional ballot papers to five per cent for every polling centre, but an unnamed individual said he would not agree and as a result voting could not take place in the constituency.
GNA