Mac-Manu wants polls in Ghana to close at 2pm

The 2016 campaign manager of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Peter Mac Manu wants the time of closing polls in the country to be changed from 5pm to 2pm.

According to him, such a change will allow for more time to count and collate votes.

The one-time chair of the governing NPP also wants stakeholders to institute reforms in the areas of declaration of election results, voter ID card production, polling station allocation, and polling station security arrangement among others.

He was speaking at an Election Roundtable organized by the Center for Democratic Development (CDD) under the theme: The Nigerian Presidential and National Assembly Elections, Lessons learned for Ghana and other West African countries.

“When you close your polls is also critical because we live in an era of power failure. Why do Ghana wait till 5pm before we close our polls. I think in Nigeria it is 2pm so that there is much sunshine to help with the counting and collation procedure because here, the numbers are even not too huge,” Peter Mac-Manu said.

The close of polls at 5pm in Ghana often results in counting and collation ending very late in the night which some have suggested aids in vote rigging.