Bright Simons got his 2020 cost per voter wrong! – Kwaku Antwi-Boasiako

Bright Simons claimed on Saturday’s Newsfile that the Electoral Commission lied when the Commission stated that the cost per voter in 2020 was $7.7.

He claimed that from his calculations, Ghana’s cost per voter was rather $12.5, as he suggested the country spent over ₵1.2 billion on the 2020 elections.

To start with, from the 2019 Appropriation Act, I have highlighted below the total 2020 budget of the Electoral Commission:

Note that the total budget for Electoral Services for 2020 was ₵760,074,169.

From the above information, I can easily understand how the EC calculated its cost per voter for the 2020 elections: If you apply an exchange rate of ₵5.82 to $1, the actual expenditure on Goods and Services of ₵762,188,869 gives you $130,960,286.77

The cost of services and supplies that support operations carried out by the Electoral Commission to conduct elections is what constitutes cost of elections

Unfortunately, when Bright Simons claimed that Ghana spent over ₵1.2 billion on the 2020 elections, he had either erroneously or deliberately added the capital expenditure of ₵515,320,775 to the EC’s actual expenditure on electoral services, and thereby arriving at a cost per voter of $12.5