The 50% plus 1 vote in the Ghana presidential elections – Unsound Mathematics

As our presidential and parliamentary elections are imminent, we shall soon hear various analyses of the results of which one particular expression gives much cause to worry. That is a presidential candidate is required to obtain 50% plus 1 vote in order to become the president of the Republic of Ghana. Interestingly, such pronouncements are heard from eminent people of the society which actually needs to be addressed.

The word cent was derived etymologically from the Latin word centum meaning a hundred on one hand; and on the other hand, per more or fewer means for each or every. Thus, percent means out of a hundred or literally for every 100. Education is meant to make life simple. As a result, mathematicians scale down or up the findings on an undertaking to 100. This means whether the figure obtained is up to 100 or not it is assumed to have a total of 100. Total means nothing is left out – all valid outcomes form part of the total. This implies, therefore that, if A had 50% of the total valid votes, then A had exactly half of the valid votes.

Let’s consider the following scenario, the total valid votes of an election was 1400, candidate A had 700 votes representing 50% of the total valid votes, candidate B had 280 votes representing 20% and candidate C had 420 votes representing 30% of the total valid votes. The sum of the percentages gives us 100%.

From the foregone explanations, if a presidential candidate requires 50% plus 1 vote to become president of Ghana, then where was that 1 vote during the computation of the percentages? Is that 1 vote part of the total valid votes? This sort of mathematics is not sound and it seems to imply that we focused our study of mathematics on passing examinations rather than its applications.

Logically, the candidate who becomes president of the nation is required to pull votes more than the sum of the votes obtained by all his competitors; else the competitors put together are the winners. Consider the following scenario, the total valid votes of an election was 1000, candidate D had 400 votes representing 40% of the total valid votes, candidate E had 280 votes representing 28% and candidate F had 320 votes representing 32% of the total valid votes.

The sum of the percentages gives us 100%. Candidate D had a simple majority but mathematically, he cannot be president because E and F put together obtained 60% of the votes. In brevity and conciseness, a presidential candidate is required to obtain more than half (50%) of the total valid votes which is mathematically sound.