petition

The results of Ghana’s 2012 and 2020 elections were challenged in the nation’s
Supreme Court. Even though the court processes in both cases did not alter
the election results, they nevertheless exposed monumental flaws in the
electoral processes. The flaws in the 2012 electoral processes were exposed at
the Supreme Court and featured in the final judgment of the court in a manner
that allowed the Electoral Commission to initiate moves towards electoral
reforms. However, the challenges of the 2020 elections, though exposed at the
courts, were never featured in the final judgment of the Supreme Court. This
paper discusses the implications of the 2020 election petition for the future of
electoral reforms in Ghana. It argues that the rigid application of the letter
of the law by the Supreme Court and the relegation to the background of the
thorny issues of electoral challenges in the 2020 elections, would render the
quest for further electoral reforms difficult. This would then make the future
of any attempt to fine-tune the electoral processes quite bleak.