Is democracy just a road-kill? E. Ablorh-Odjidja August 10, 2013   One standout in the last election petition case, the over-voting issue, suggests that the 2012 Presidential Election was flawed.   The parties of Petitioners and Respondents made oral presentations to the Supreme Court justices on August 07, 2013, in which they took positions, for or against the outcome of the 2012 Presidential Elections.   For the Petitioners, over-voting was the core argument for their case.  And the ”irregularities that characterized the conduct of the election" was another point raised.  They, therefore, as consequence, wanted the justices to negate or reverse the election result.    The Respondents, however, dismissed this plea as gratuitous and not substantial enough to warrant a change in the election result.   They maintained that canceling or overturning the result, on account of “such errors” as alleged would produce “loss of confidence in the electoral system,” and amount to an attack on the people’s constitutional right to vote.   The Petitioners, in response, argued for the affirmation of the “right to vote.”  And stressed that this “right to vote” must come with the same weight and dignity in the electoral processes, which processes were flawed in the 2012 elections..   And that, the numerous instances of the over-voting, indicated on the “Pink Sheets,” the primary election data collection documents, went to show that the "one man one vote concept” relevant to the democratic process had been undermined.   Therefore, to allow the result of this flawed election to stand, the petitioners claimed, would be a flagrant abuse of the democratic system.   As presentations to the court went on in the courtroom, doubts about the integrity of the 2012 Presidential Election lingered on minds in the street; a manifestation that in a sense was an awakening of a healthy democratic spirit at work in the public mind.   The “one man one vote concept” raised in the arguments to the court is very essential because it forms the structure on which democratic elections are built.  And this, at the same time, is a principle that the petitioner's claim has been abused; as shown by the over-voting and inaccuracies on the "Pink Sheets.”   The Electoral Commission (EC), the body charged with policing the integrity of our national elections, in response to the over-voting charges on the "Pink Sheets", rather argued that the over-votes were merely clerical errors and that the election itself was faultless.     And that those clerical errors didn’t amount to enough reason to prevent the EC from declaring the winner by the evening of December 09, 2012.   The EC’s assertion did not address the fact that besides the clerical errors being on the same “Pink Sheets,” the 1st Petitioner (Nana Addo) was in the lead the day the balloting ended, only to see his lead vanish on the second day when the results were announced by the EC.   To the average mind, something had gone wrong.  A road-kill on the way to the presidency had happened.  And in a road-kill, you needed not to see or know the offending vehicle.  The physical body on the road was all that was needed, in this case, the over-votes, to point to the fact that the accident happened.   The first petitioner was that victim on the electoral roadkill.   Focusing the mind on the inconsistencies and the margin of votes that made John Mahama the declared winner in 2012 should explain why the egregious result of the 2012 election should not be allowed to stand.   Close to the elections, a list of 13,917,366 registered voters was submitted by the EC.  In the end, there were 14,158,890 votes cast, an increase which the EC Commissioner, Dr. Afari Djan, had no explanation for while on the stand.   The over-vote count brought to court by the 1st Petitioner totaled 745,569.  John Mahama’s margin of victory was 77,130, about 10% of the total of over-votes on the "pink sheets".   The Petitioner had submitted the numbers on the “Pink Sheets” as proof.  The Respondent's retort that they were just “clerical errors” was an attempt to wish the partitioner’s case away.   Just clerical errors, the Respondents claimed.  But first, they couldn’t claim it didn’t end up as votes.  Or, even if it did, it had still then to be ascertained as to whom those over-votes benefitted, the partitioner or the respondent.    The Constitutional requirement for a presidential election victory is a gain of 50% plus 1%.  Wipe away Mahama’s margin of 77,130 votes (0.7%) and he would not have won the presidency.  The over-votes, therefore, were critical.   It is the job of the EC to guard the integrity of our elections, knowing that in the present circumstances the over-vote count could only benefit the Respondent and not the Petitioner.    This knowledge alone should require more scrutiny on the the winner.  The loser gained nothing, even if the over-vote came his way, But the EC didn't act.    The over-vote, like a road-kill, was the evidence that something nefarious had occurred.  The EC only had to remove the over-vote to make sure that the election was safely done.   To request to know the details of the beneficiaries first before doing anything about electoral integrity must be seen as avoidance or a legal or technical ploy   At this point, the EC should already have assumed that the entire electoral process might have been skewed to benefit or injure someone’s chances.   And that, no matter whom it benefited or injured, the evidence of a flawed process was there, just like the body in a roadkill situation.    The EC had only one responsibility.  It would be to remove the roadkill or failing to do that not to prevent the courts from doing so.     Strikingly, the registered number of voters for the presidential election exceeded that for the parliament side by about 127,210 votes, an occurrence that was at variance with the law and easy for the EC to spot.    But somehow, it seems the over-votes count floated on within the electoral system to end up in the final count.   With so much at stake, would any competitor readily concede to a presidential victory of less than a full 1% margin?    Certainly, it will not harm to redo the election.  Not at all areas, only in the districts where the over-votes occurred.  And it gives all parties an equal chance to do it again in the interest of fair play, a move toward peace, and the final loser a chance for magnanimity.   For President Mahama, the act of conceding for a re-run gives him the chance to establish a legacy for statesmanship and political sagacity.   As for the EC, Dr. Afari Gyan, he had his chance but ended up in court diminished by his defense of the flawed process.   E. Ablorh-Odjidja, publisher, www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, August 10, 2013,   Permission to publish: Please feel free to publish or reproduce, with credits, unedited. If posted at a website, email a copy of the web page to publisher@ghanadot.com. Or don't publish at all.