Commonsense suggests two voters’ lists: current and appended

Aug 23, 2019 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

Mr. Vincent Alexander is a member of Gecom Board, but he always comes off in the press as an appointed spokesman of the Board. So, I ask him to refer to his letter of a few years ago in SN, in which he said no name can be removed from the Voters’ List (V.L.) unless it is subjected to a very arduous and difficult legal procedure. (Hope he recalls that letter).
Alexander had possessed a bias at that time that was clearly against removing names.
So what is the big deal now? Leave all the names on V.L. – long dead and emigrated folks. They will not show up to vote. And, no one can impersonate them. Strict ID laws are enforced.
What is the purpose of House-to-House (HtH) registration? To capture two categories of eligible voters: (a) Recently Naturalized citizens (b) Guyanese-born citizens who never bothered to register and vote. Both categories, I am reliably told, will not amount to more than 3,000. One other category: those newly eligible voters who turned 18 since last November should already have made it onto the Voters’ List, as per the 2005 Law requiring Continual Updating.
And, what about the aching and monumentally duplicitous task of Re-registering over 400,000 names who are already registered – and voted in the May 2015 and as recently as November 2018?
Does it make sense to launch a HtH operation costing $3.5 billion – just to find those 3,000 new voters, when such an exercise will take an estimated eight months – and risk violating the stipulations of the constitution? Is it not easier and more efficient to ask those 3,000 voters (via public announcements) to report to the local District office and register? Also, party scrutineers always know who their supporters are. They will make sure their supporters visit the local district office to register.
Here is a very commonsensical method to prepare the Voters’ List:
(1) Scrap HtH: Re-registering over 400,000 names is not only a huge waste of time and money – but how do you integrate these 400,000 with the Old List from last November’s election? This blending of two lists will be susceptible to too many mistakes – dropping of names, duplicating names. [The Chief Justice has essentially ruled that Gecom cannot throw away that Old List; if they do, they risk dropping names of thousands of eligible voters].
(2) PRINT two lists: (a) Old List used in last November’s election (b) An Appended List containing the estimated 3,000 newly registered names comprising recently naturalized citizens and those who had never bothered to register and vote in previous elections.
Registering an estimated 3,000 new voters, allowing one month for Claims and Objections, printing of two Lists containing an estimated 500,000 names – all can be done in six weeks. If I am given the job to run Gecom, with a trained and reasonably competent staff, I will guarantee the preparation of these two lists in six weeks – with reasonable standards of accuracy. And, I will do the job for no pay.
Note: Chief Justice’s ruling is a facile guarantee – no name will be dropped. Guyanese citizens have to take basic responsibility for simple things: (1) If they don’t have an ID, visit your district office today or within four weeks to get a new ID (2) Not sure your name is on the List – visit your district office and make sure your name is on the list (3) Voted in the last two elections – you don’t have to do anything. Your name is guaranteed to be on the list. And, this will be true for at least 410,000 voters who voted in May 2015.
Mike Persaud

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