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Head of Communications for the Electoral Commission (EC), Eric Kofi Dzakpasu has admitted in support of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) that it is practically impossible to transmit election results electronically from each of the over 29,000 polling centres nationwide.

This is so because of the infrastructural challenges and cost involve in transmitting the results from the polling stations, he said.

“...we have not said that the E-Transmission will start from every polling station”, Eric Kofi Dzakpasu insisted.

He was reacting to the NPP's concern over an EC’s advert placed in the Daily Graphic eliciting companies to bid for the electronic transfer of 29,000 polling station results.

The opposition party accused the EC of not being transparent enough about the proposed method arguing the e-transmission of results had failed in other countries including Kenya, Ecuador and Mexico.

According to the party’s Campaign Manager, Mr Peter Mac Manu, the new proposed method in the way the EC intends to implement it fails to address the critical challenges that the reform process seeks to overcome and also added that there was no law giving the EC power to electronically transfer results.

Speaking on Okay Fm’s Morning Show, Mr. Eric Kofi Dzakpasu acknowledged that indeed the agreement reached at the Electoral Reform Committee and accepted at the IPAC meeting clearly states that the electronic transmission of results will start from the Constituency collation centres and not at each and every polling station.

“We have never said that and we can’t say that because it is not practically possible, considering infrastructure challenges and the cost involve. We are not going to transmit results from polling station and that is also not the agreement which the Electoral Reform Committee and IPAC settled on”, he stated.

The EC's Head of Communications further conceded that the results from the various polling stations get to the constituency collation centres, the results on the pink sheets will be scanned and sent to national collation centre electronically.

“So EC has not said anything and we have not said anywhere that we are going to transmit results from the polling stations electronically. If anything, the results from the 275 constituency levels will be collated signed by all the agents and send them electronically to the national collation centre”, he posited.