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The IEA is calling on the EC, NCCE and Political Parties to play a proactive role in ensuring a reduction of the high incidence of rejected ballots that have undermined the will of people during elections and ultimately affected the maturation of Ghana�s electoral and democratization process. A �rejected ballot� refers to a ballot paper that cannot be counted for one or more of a range of reasons. These are: the ballot paper does not have an official mark; the voter has cast more votes than he or she is entitled to; the voter has made writings or marks by which he or she can be identified; the voter has left the ballot paper blank or has marked or thumb-printed it in such a way that it is not clear for whom he or she intended to vote. In 1992, rejected ballots accounted for 3.6% of the valid votes cast. This reduced to 1.53% in the 1996. In the first round of the 2000 General Elections, it accounted for 1.8% of the valid votes counts but reduced 1.58% during the Presidential Run-off. In 2004, it started souring up and constituted 2.2% of the votes cast while in 2008 it took a huge chunk of the votes recording an overall percentage of 2.4% of the valid votes cast. Although Ghana is getting matured democratically, it is clear that individuals are getting confused with the voting process. Indeed, the number of rejected ballots recorded in the first round of the 2008 presidential race, was unprecedentedly higher than ever; both in terms of percentages and in terms of figures. According to the Electoral Commission of Ghana, as many as 205, 438 ballots were rejected in the 2008 elections which constituted 2.4% of total 8,671,272 votes cast. Hypothetically, the �Rejected Ballot Party� placed third in the 2008 presidential race ahead of Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom of the Convention People�s Party (CPP) who placed third with 113,494 (1.34 %) behind Prof. John Evans Atta Mills of the NDC who placed second with 4,056,634 (47.92%). Indeed, the percentage of the rejected ballots far outstripped the combined performance of Dr. Edward Mahama of the People National Convention (PNC), Emmanuel Ansah Antwi of the Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), Thomas Ward Brew of the Democratic People�s Party (DPP), Kwesi Amoafo Yeboah, an Independent Candidate and Kwabena Adjei of the Reformed Patriotic Democratic (RPD). In short, if rejected ballots were a political party they could boast of a steady increase in popularity ahead of the smaller parties since Ghana�s return to multiparty democracy in 1992. There is no evidence that for instance all the rejected ballots in the 2008 runoff elections were NPP votes neither is there any evidence that such votes could have gone to the NDC. Had it not been the high incidence of rejected ballots, the 2008 elections could have produced a clear winner in the first round. ��Verily verily then, the EC would have had no business spending millions of dollars on a second round. The second round (or even the third) vote, was simply unnecessary, probably a classic case of causing financial loss�� In the 2012 General Elections too, the number of rejected ballots stood at 251,720 (2.3%). Although the number of rejected ballots as a percentage of the total votes cast reduced by 0.13% from the 2008 rate of 2.4% to 2.3% in 2012, the 2012 rate was still higher than the 2004 rate of 2.2%. Again, the number of rejected ballots in 2012 was higher than the total votes of all the other Presidential candidates excluding the NDC and NPP candidates. What really accounts for this situation? There is a conspiracy theory that claims that most of the rejected ballots are a creation of Malevolent Election Officials who manage to find their way to the strong holds of their opposing candidate and during the issuing out of ballot papers to voters or setting out of the ballots for counting after the poll, apply extra thumbprints to a number of ballot papers to invalidate them, thereby reducing the votes of their opponent. The IEA is yet to conduct empirical research to authenticate this claim. But the fact remains that having regard to the very narrow margins by which elections have been won in Ghana since the 2008 elections, the large numbers of spoilt ballots clearly affect the democratic choice of who becomes President or Member of Parliament and should be a matter of concern for all well meaning Ghanaians as we consider ways to fine-tune our electoral process. The IEA believes that at the very minimum, democracy consolidation require the existence of free, fair, peaceful and transparent elections that allows the citizens to choose their leaders. However, the high incidence of rejected ballots that have characterized our elections poses a severe threat to the realization of the minimum requirement for democratic consolidation. It is against this backdrop that The IEA is calling on the EC, NCCE and Political Parties to work together to ensure a sustained educational and sensitization programme on the voting/thumb-printing process. Polling agents must be vigilant to keep an eye on Malevolent Election Officials who may deliberately invalidate ballot papers. Such officials, the IEA recommends, must be prosecuted.