Challenges in District Level Elections Raise Doubts for Election 2024″

It was a major assignment for the country’s Electoral Commission this year to organise local assembly elections. Since the conduct of the exercise on 19th December 2023, there have been several complaints regarding turnout raising concern about the preparation towards election 2024.

The district Level elections, faced a major challenge of inadequate logistics at some polling stations leading to the postponement of the exercise in some districts.

These challenges have triggered worry in some Ghanaians for the Election 2024. They ask whether the EC will rise to the occasion and deliver as expected or not.

According to the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers, CODEO, while setting up for the DLE’s, 50.2 percent of polling stations had all their election-related supplies available.

About 40 districts in the Ashanti and Eastern Regions had their DLE postponed to Thursday, 21st December, 2023, because of ballot paper errors, voting material distribution delays, and non-functioning Biometric Verification Devices (BVD)

In a statement, the NDC’s Eastern Regional Secretary, Jamal Konneh, sent a strong warning to the EC to scrap any plans to replicate the technical difficulties experienced during the DLEs. He says the EC must not reproduce the “mess” in the 2024 elections in order to avoid any unfortunate events.

Speaking with some polling agents, the delay in the provisions for the DLEs has influenced their perception about the 2024 election. They are thus urging the EC to put in place the necessary measures to make Election 2024 a success.