Ghana vote results expected Friday

(CNN) -- Ghana's new president won't be determined until Friday when voters in one constituency return to the polls to recast their ballots, the chairman of the Ghana Electoral Commission announced.

Votes cast Sunday in the other 229 constituencies have been certified, said Kwadwo Afari-Gyan at a news conference in the capital, Accra. He did not say why voters in the Tain constituency, in midwestern Ghana's Brong Ahafo region, must vote again.

John Evans Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress leads Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of the incumbent New Patriotic Party by 23,055 votes in the run-off election, Afari-Gyan said.

Such a margin is too small to call a winner without the Tain voters.

Mills won Tain constituency in the general election, defeating Akufo-Addo there by 1,276 votes.

Election monitors from 70 countries were on hand for the voting, hailing Ghana as a democratic leader for holding open and transparent elections amid news of military coups in Guinea, political strife in the subcontinent and elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe marred by controversy and violence.

"This election is very significant," Ambassador Filiberto Ceriani Sebregondi, head of the European Commission in Accra, Ghana, told CNN. "Ghana is certainly an example country, a model for Africa and the world." Watch iReporter Saleh M. M. Rahman's video of people waiting to vote »

The voting saw no major outbreaks of violence, he said.

Mills and Akufo-Addo earlier led a field of eight candidates in the December 7 election but failed to secure more than 50 percent of the vote. Akufo-Addo held a slight lead.

The Ghanaian constitution requires a second round of balloting if no candidate wins a clear majority.

The winner will succeed outgoing President John Kufuor, who is stepping down after eight years in office.

Ghana, a country about the size of England, is the world's second-biggest cocoa and gold producer. In 2007, leaders announced the discovery of oil off its shore.

The world recession, however, has hindered growth. Ghana has seen a decline in its exports and will not tap into its oil resources until 2010.

Part of a former British colony, Ghana was among the first African countries to gain independence in 1957. It endured a series of coups before military dictator Lt. Jerry Rawlings took power in 1981. A decade later, Rawlings led the country through the transition to a stable democracy with multi-party elections.

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