Since 1992, Ghana has held relatively peaceful and credible national elections every four years.
Ghana National Election 2016
2016 National Elections
On December 7th, 2016, Ghana held largely peaceful presidential and legislative elections, after a tense pre-election period which included some incidents of violence. To reduce tensions and dissuade violence before, on, and after election day, all seven presidential candidates pledged their commitment to peaceful polls by signing the Accra Declaration, which was organized by the National Peace Council. This reflects Ghana’s broader commitment to transparent, free, and inclusive democratic processes.
Before the Election
The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) deployed 138 long-term observers (LTOs) to track the general political environment, including election-related preparatory activities by state and non-state actors, civic/voter education programs as well as political party campaign activities. Guided by a checklist, bi-weekly field reports were submitted from August 1, 2016 - November 18, 2016 by the LTOs in 138 randomly-selected constituencies covering all 10 regions of Ghana.
Pre-Election Findings Summary
CODEO-observed incidents of violence against women were low during the pre-election period. This, coupled with anecdotal evidence and other pre-election indicators including empowerment and party inclusion indicates that while violence may be low, Ghana has room to improve in encouraging women’s political participation.
Election Day
Continuing its commitment to election observation in Ghana, CODEO deployed 7,000 nonpartisan citizen observers to all 275 constituencies in the country. Of these, a random and representative sample of 1,500 conducted a parallel vote tabulation (PVT) to observe the opening, voting and counting process. Due to the absence of gender disaggregated data, there is no way to determine whether the few reported incidents of harassment on election day were perpetrated against or by women, which is why we have decided not to include these data here.
