Delroy Chuck
THE ELECTORAL OFFICE of Jamaica is busily preparing for the next General Elections, which it surmises could come as early as June. It is trying to clean up the voter's list, removing dead persons, changing addresses of voters who have moved, and is determined to remove voters who cannot be found. So far, the Electoral Office has done a fairly good job to clean up the election process. Yet, so much more needs to be done.
Last week, political representatives received lists of persons who cannot be found by the Electoral Office verifiers. These are voters who were enumerated and hitherto checked at given addresses but have either removed or were not present when the verifiers visited. Actually, the verifiers visited at least three times before declaring that the voters cannot be found. The result is that nearly 300,000 registered voters are in danger of being removed from the electoral lists, unless they are found or they come forward and identify their present whereabouts.
I am at present going through my list in North Eastern St. Andrew and initial checks suggest that over 3,000 voters could be removed from the list unless they contact the Returning Officer, at 905-2693. Yet, over half of these voters are present in the constituency but were not verified for a variety of reasons, including their unavailability when the verifiers visited their premises. However, the most obvious reason is that voters have removed and, so far, failed to notify the Electoral Office of their new addresses. As I walk and drive around the constituency, and using my personal knowledge, I have found many voters who have not yet been verified.
VERIFIERS
In fact, a significant shortcoming of the verifiers' duties was their failure to verify persons who are found at new addresses. Verifiers are given lists of persons to identify at given addresses and when they fail to find these persons that is the end of the matter, even though there are different persons living at these addresses. Very few verifiers ask these new residents if they were enumerated elsewhere, which, if processed properly, would account for and verify them at their new addresses. In fact, if voters were verified at their new addresses, I reckon that most of the 300,000 unverified voters would have been found.
Sadly, the whole verification process has been a nightmare, and it continues. Its main success has been to identify dead persons and even that has had its flaws, as some identified dead persons are actually alive. Amazingly, the Electoral Office would have spent over 400 million dollars on the process, and there will still be unresolved problems with the voters' lists. For example, persons who are overseas will not be removed, so why should persons who are elsewhere in the country be removed? Admittedly, the difficulty is to find them. But, they exist, and should not be removed from the list unless it can be positively proven that they are dead or have migrated.
VOTER RE-VERIFICATION
Voter apathy has contributed significantly to the voter re-verification nightmare. In spite of the best efforts of the Electoral Office and the numerous advertisements in the media, hundreds of thousands of voters have not responded. Democracy is too important to leave to the politicians alone. Our citizens need to take democracy seriously and even if they contribute by serving on juries or vote in elections, they should play a part. Far too many of our citizens are not living up to their responsibilities. Somehow, they feel the country or others owe them a living. They expect others to take them to the promise land or to make life better for themselves and their loved ones.
Until every Jamaican become stakeholders in their country, the passage to a safer and better future for our country will not be easy. There are many of us who enter politics to make our contribution and not for any personal benefit; the least we ask of others is to participate in the democratic process. Even now, the very least that citizens can do is to secure their votes so they can participate in the next election, whenever it comes.
Delroy Chuck is an attorney-at-law and Member of Parliament. He can be contacted by email at delchuck@hotmail.Com.
