Are Electoral Outcomes Influenced by Rejected Ballots? The Case of Ghana’s Elections Under the Fourth Republic

Abstract

Elections have become the prerequisite of democratic governance in most countries. In pursuit of this democratic imperative, Ghana has conducted eight (8) successive elections since the inception of the Fourth Republic. In the quest to seek continuous improvement, the Election Management Body of Ghana has over the years implemented various policies to give citizens the right to vote to choose leaders. However, notwithstanding the relentless effort to improve the electoral process, the incidence of rejected ballots poses risk to the democratic value of elections. The quantum of rejected ballots sometimes is enough to push the elections into a runoff. Apart from the financial and economic costs to the nation, runoff elections birthed by rejected ballots creates tensions and anxiety with the tendency to threaten the peace and security of countries. The study adopted a descriptive exploratory research design to find out the effect of rejected ballots on electoral outcomes and the factors that account for the incidence of rejected ballots in Ghana’s elections. The study revealed that factors such as protest voting, ignorance of the voting system, the structure and design of ballot papers, illiteracy of voters, and political biases of electoral officers as responsible for the causes of rejected ballots. The study further revealed a strong correlation between rejected ballots and electoral democracy. The study also recommends measures that must be implemented by stakeholders to curb the incidence of rejected ballots to safeguard the efficacy of democratic elections.

Keywords: elections; democracy; spoilt ballot; rejected ballots.

DOI: 10.7176/JLPG/125-04

Publication date:October 31^st 2022