Lack of Strategic Human Resource Management Principles in the Case of Ghana 2020 Election Presidential Results: The Computational Errors in the Declaration Decision

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The backbone of this research is based on the national pledge: “I promise on my honour, to be faithful and loyal to Ghana my motherland….”. This is the pledge taken by everybody in Ghana, especially those appointed by the government, and the executive itself, before they take up public office. This applies to the electoral commissioners as well, and therefore, with regards to elections, due-diligence is important. This paper discusses election results declared by the Electoral Commission of Ghana, with computational errors that undermine the integrity of the EC and Ghana as a whole. Ghana has 275 constituencies; this means 275 Members of Parliament (MP) are elected each time. There were 38,622 polling stations across the 16 regions of Ghana. In all, there were 12 presidential candidates in this year’s general election. The law mandates that the EC announces election results and winners at the collation centres for MPs, and the electoral commission chairperson announces the presidential result and winner at the headquarters. In this year’s presidential election, the results had errors that generated political agitation by the opposition, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), thereby rejecting the results announced by the EC chairperson. Hence, a method is adopted using the authors’ own 2020 Elections Results Database System and the disputed results announced by the EC chairperson was checked. The errors have been corrected academically for reference purposes. The errors committed by the EC dents their reputation and image, but it is not a big mistake that will lead to complete annulment of results. It is recommended that the electoral commission develop or purchase a software that would help them capture election results and carry out computations automatically, going forward. An empirical data with mixed method was used to deduce the correct results, both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Keywords: Election, Ghana, Votes, Ballots, Declaration, Strategic, HRM, Database System

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