Regain the confidence and support of the people instead of doing everything possible to divide us

Jun 02, 2020 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

The APNU+AFC coalition continues to push the narrative that they lost votes due to the number of rejected ballots identified in the March 2, 2020 elections. Listening to the coalition’s agents, one would be led to believe that there was some sort of conspiracy to take votes away from them by rejecting ballots that were cast in their favour. Nothing else could be further from the truth.
Ballots are rejected for basically four reasons.
1. Want of an official mark (the six digit stamp)
2. Marked or void for uncertainty (no visible mark for any party)
3. Marked for more than one candidate (self explanatory)
4. Elector identified (Elector writing their name on the ballot)

An examination of the last three General Elections clearly shows that the number of rejected ballots have been reducing, as people become more educated of the voting process.
The rejection is as follows:
In 2011 – 4,481 ballots were rejected.
In 2015 – 4,000 ballots were rejected.
In 2020 – 3,983 ballots were rejected.
The 2020 figures clearly show that the numbers being bandied about by the coalition are a figment of their wild imaginations.
An examination for the reasons why those ballots were rejected clearly shows that roughly 90% are for reasons 2 and 3. Reasons 1 and 4 are the least common reasons for the rejection of ballots. This clearly illustrates that the narrative being peddled by the coalition are all lies.
It should also be noted that that for reasons 2 and 3, which are the main reasons why votes are rejected there is no way of knowing who the voter intended to vote for.
One would wish that the coalition instead of spouting these fallacies would use the same energy to examine why they lost the elections and work on regaining the confidence and support of the Guyanese population instead of doing everything possible to divide us.

Yours truly,
Sherwyn Greaves