The State of Electoral Reforms in Ghana

Ransford Edward Van Gyampo

Abstract


Following Ghana’s December 2012 elections, there was a protracted election petition process at the nation’s Supreme Court challenging the declaration of the winner as the duly elected presidential candidate. Even though the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the declared winner, it made several recommendations that paved the way for numerous interventions aimed at putting together proposals for electoral reform to finetune Ghana’s electoral processes. Several such reform proposals were submitted to the Electoral Commission by the end of 2013. Nevertheless, these were not implemented to guide the 2016 general elections. The successful conduct of the 2016 elections has therefore been described as a “miracle.” Why were the reform proposals not implemented? What is the current state of reform proposals submitted to the Electoral Commission? What is the way forward? This article addresses these questions.

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