Petitioners have proven annulment of only 80 votes – Quarshie-Idun

Counsel for the second respondent is claiming that the petitioners in the hearing of a challenge on John Mahama’s declaration as president, have not done enough to prove their case that the declaration made by the E.C was fraudulent.

James Quarshie-Idun is claiming that the petitioners have only managed to prove just a single discrepancy in the 2012 polls, during the 47 days of arguments by both parties.

Quarshie-Idun made this claim Wednesday, at the presentation of his oral address to the panel of nine judges hearing the petition.

Explaining his claim, he said out of 26,000 polling stations used in the 2012 polls, the petitioners have proven a discrepancy on a pink sheet used to record results on which, instead of writing 97 votes, the presiding officer wrote just 17. It shows a difference of 80 votes.

He added this discrepancy was detected after comparing votes counted at the polling station and votes calculated at the constituency collation center.

But counsel for the Electoral Commission said, however, this discrepancy was so insignificant to have had any effect on the results declared. It is unclear which polling station he was referring to.

The petitioners are relying on over 10,119 polling stations to prove their case that the E.C's declaration was fraudulent.

Counsel for the petitioners, Philip Addison said invalid votes, totalling 2,622,551, were attributed to the 1st respondent and should be taken out of 5,574,761, which are the total votes declared for him.

He argued that this should leave John Mahama with 2,952,210, representing 41.79% of the valid votes cast in the 2012 election which is not enough to make him president.