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Officials of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Upper West Region have expressed worry over the number of spoilt ballots in last Saturday�s polls that saw Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo elected as the party�s flag bearer for the 2016 presidential election. There were 213 rejected ballots in the Upper West Region alone where the total votes cast were 4,594. The rejected ballots in the region, indeed, exceeded votes garnered by either of the two other candidates, Francis Addai-Nimoh and John Alan Kyerematen, who polled 46 and 189 votes respectively. The Upper West Regional First Vice Chairman of the NPP, Mr Hafiz bin-Salih, said �the high number of rejected ballots should be a concern not only to the NPP but to the general society�. �These are top executives who voted, and if there were so many spoilt ballots, what do we expect from the average voter at the grass roots?� he asked. High figures In the Wa West and Jirapa constituencies, for instance, there were 31 and 30 rejected ballots respectively, while Nadowli/Kaleo and Sissala East recorded 26 and 23 rejected ballots respectively. �Those figures are way too high for an electoral college of supposedly elite voters,� Mr bin-Salih said. �It could have been excused if the number of voters were very high as in the national elections. �It is a concern for us as a party because our supporters must be able to vote properly in order to not waste their votes. The education on the voting process starts from here,� he added. He appealed to the National Commission for Civic Education to help in the campaign to reduce the number of spoilt ballots during elections. �You remember that the total number of spoilt ballots out-numbered the votes of some candidates during the 2012 presidential election,� he recalled. Nana Akufo-Addo polled 4,146 votes as against 46 by the Member of Parliament for Mampong, Mr Addai-Nimoh, and 189 by a former minister of state, Mr Allan Kyerematen, in a landslide victory in the Upper West Region.