Delroy Chuck
TODAY IS the final opportunity for voters' who have been inadvertently left off the June 16th list to get on the electoral list. After today, the electoral office will issue its final voters' list on which it is likely the next general election will be decided. In daily advertisements, the Director of Elections has urged electors to check for their names. Sadly, the whole reverification process has been disappointing, ill-conceived and unfair to many voters.
To be fair, the electoral office has tried valiantly to get an accurate voters' list and the Director of Elections, Danville Walker, claims the list is 99.5 per cent correct. Yet, in a first-past-the-post system, that is not enough. Mr. Walker is admitting that the list could be corrected by 6,300 voters or just over an average of 100 voters per constituency. Well, at least one constituency, St. Elizabeth South East, was decided by less than 100 votes in the 2002 General Election and five others were decided by less than 400 votes. Moreover, many divisions were decided in the 2003 Local Government Elections by less than 10 votes. Every vote, therefore, matters.
To be sure, the intent and purpose of the reverification process were salutary. The electoral office wanted to verify that voters were still resident in their constituencies, deceased voters were removed, and voters who had moved could have their votes transferred to their new polling stations, divisions or constituencies. However, the actual execution of the reverification process was not smooth. Verifiers checked residences but what happened thereafter was quite baffling.
IRRESPONSIBLE VERIFIERS
The verifiers had the original voters' list and sought to verify if those voters still resided at the given address. If the voters had removed that was basically the end of the matter - very few verifiers asked who were the new residents, to include and verify them at their new residences. The consequence is that many removed voters have disappeared from the voters' list, as no one verified them. Further, if the voters were not present when the verifiers visited on three occasions, the voters were removed from the list. I have actually found many voters whose homes have been visited three times and who were elsewhere and, thus, have lost the right to vote as they have been removed from the list. Moreover, even when they call the electoral office and an appointment is made, the verifiers rarely turn up at the appointed time.
My concern is that nearly 200,000 voters will be removed from the original voters' list because they have not been verified but, presumably, they exist as their photograph, fingerprints, etc. are on record. Most of them have their Electoral Identification Card which states that it is valid until 2007, and should make them eligible to vote in an election called before the end of 2007. If they turn up when an election is called, should they be denied?
I readily acknowledge that the electoral office has given every opportunity for these voters' to come forward, be verified and be included on the voters list. However, voters who enumerated in 1997 and have their Electoral Identification Card are eligible voters, and the fact that they were not verified or failed to respond, perhaps because they were abroad and not so recorded, should not be a disqualification to their right to vote. Moreover, many voters' mistakenly believe that if they still have these cards there is no need to be reverified.
I would urge the electoral office, therefore, out of an abundance of caution, to think again about discarding the nearly 200,000 voters who have not been verified. They probably exist, even though they have not come forward. I strongly suggest that they should remain on a special reserve list in each constituency in which they enumerated and specially checked, questioned and examined if they turn up to vote in any elections held before the end of 2007. Unless this is done and in spite of the effort, energy and expenditure of the electoral office, a clean and accurate voters' list may still not exist.
Delroy Chuck is an attorney-at-law and Member of Parliament. He can be contacted by email at delchuck@hotmail.com.
