The Kumawu by-election was mostly quiet, with no significant incidents, thanks to the effective implementation of security measures.
Within the 75 polling places where voting was conducted, there were several police officers present.
Prior to yesterday's poll, the Ghana Police Service declared that sufficient police officers had been sent to Kumawu for the by-election.
The Kumawu by-election was conducted without any reported incidences of violence, in contrast to the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election.
Views of observers
Some of the top officials from both parties that were in the constituency to witness were Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, the General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), and Richard Ahiagbah, the National Communications Director of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).
When compared to earlier by-elections, Mr. Asiedu Nketiah noted that the voter turnout was promising because such elections frequently saw poor voter turnout.
Some locals claimed to have bought votes; however, this claim could not be supported since Mr. Asiedu Nketiah, a member of the observation team from the Ghana Integrity Initiative, claimed in an interview that he had not seen anything of the like.
Harriet Thompson, the British High Commissioner to Ghana, who was also present to observe the voting, said that it was her first time seeing an election in the nation and regarded it as calm.
Mr. Ahiagbah, the NPP's director of communications, was overjoyed by the election results and said they showed his party had won handily. Some police officers deployed receiving a reprimand from a supervisor
Several police officers deployed receiving a briefing from a supervisor
pink bedsheet
However, according to Kwadwo Baffoe Donkor, the signing of a pink sheet by poll workers at a polling place earlier in the day was one of the minor incidents that were noted, but it had no bearing on the results of the election because the Electoral Commission (EC) intervened promptly to resolve the situation and allow voting to proceed peacefully.
The incident started as a result of the NDC alleging that one of the by-election voting stations' agents was coerced into signing pink sheet forms.
Benjamin Banor-Bio, the Ashanti Regional Director of the EC, refuted the NDC's assertion and claimed that the NPP operatives at the polling place made a mistake and that no one was coerced into signing any documents.
Mr. Banor-Bio went on to say that each poll worker had to sign two different kinds of pink sheets.
He claimed that before the polls opened, the poll workers had to sign a piece of paperwork acknowledging the quantity of ballots sent to the location and the number of voters.
He further stated that the agents signed the documents to confirm their attendance at the counting after the ballots had been counted.
What actually happened, in his words, "was that after the agents signed the first portion, the Presiding Officer asked them to write their names on the other form and sign against their names after the close of polls"
He said that he continued to sign his share even after the NPP agent had written his name.
When the EC was alerted to the problem, according to Mr. Banor-Bio, "we immediately replaced the pink sheet for them."
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