Dear Editor,
This is in response to Mr M Maxwell’s ‘Will Bisram provide his findings concerning the 20% of voters who vanished from the electoral landscape in 2006?’ (SN, March7).
A poll is an expensive venture and there are usually very limited funds to study side issues such as why people don’t vote. Polls usually focus on how people will vote and not on who will not vote or why they don’t vote; sociologists undertake this kind of study. While I am interested in the subject of non-voters, I am handicapped in terms of resources and time constraints.
The NACTA polls as well as the Turkeyen Research and Polling Institute polls (with which I was also associated) had limited funds and were/are largely self-financed except when the media commissioned the polls, and even then there was not enough funding to examine the reasons why people don’t vote.
Although we were approached by other interested entities to conduct polls, we opted for self-financing. I can assure readers that TRPI director Dr Ramharack, Rennie Ramracha, Ravi Dev, Vassan Ramracha, Vishnu Bisram and others spent tons of money to conduct polls in Guyana from 1990 onwards. We were chastised for spending our own money; in fact, some critics (one from another newspaper) felt it was unprofessional to use your own money to do research and that it would have been very professional for political parties to pay us to conduct polls. I disagree! In 2006, a group out of Washington through the good offices of the late David de Caires contacted me for a commissioned poll. I did not decline to do the poll but because of time constraints and conflicts with my employment, I suggested the names of other pollsters who could perform the task. I believe those polls were eventually conducted by Dick Morris and another Republican affiliated pollster (neither of whom I suggested) out of the US. As we learnt from their findings, the Morris polls suggested that the newly formed AFC was on the verge of creating history by winning the elections. The AFC ended up with about 8% of the votes. Incidentally, several of the interviewers who worked for Morris also worked for the NACTA poll gathering more or less the same information. Yet the reported findings were different – with Morris saying the AFC would win while NACTA saying the PPP would win. The Morris poll put a severe strain on the expenses of the NACTA poll. Morris’s fee per interview sheet was much greater than the amount offered to interviewers by NACTA that was forced to up its stipends in order to gather data. As best as I recall, the Morris polls, like NACTA, did not include non-voters in their published findings.
In my personal interviews, and in my debriefings of interviewers, I gathered that several individuals indicated they would not vote, but not as many as 20%. They were not included in the poll findings. We came across several categories of non or “cannot” voters. Some were transients. Some worked in the “bush” or in the agro or cattle fields far away from home and could not return to vote, and saw no personal gain in voting. Some had missing ID cards or the ID cards had not arrived on time. Others were disillusioned with all the parties and the political system. Some were preparing to migrate and did not give a damn about the government or the country any more; they were simply fed up with politicians and did not want to hear about voting.
In 2006, political apathy had begun to set in and it was not confined to any particular age group or ethnicity. It was a harbinger of what would happen in 2011 and yet no party paid heed. I did point out in 2011 that apathy was very high especially among traditional PPP supporters but my concerns were dismissed as those of a “disgruntled pollster” by detractors and critics and even friends in the PPP. Last month, one PPP stalwart met me in Georgetown and said “I should have listened to you in 2011 about low turnout. You were so right.”
In queries with political friends in the PNC, PPP, ROAR, AFC and in interviews with Gecom staff, I was told that that the low turnout rate of 2006 was in not fact “very low.” It was explained that many names on the voters’ list had migrated or moved. Many had gone across the border to work and could not come back to cast ballots as was expected. I did not have the wherewithal to verify these various claims or explanations. It is not that far back in history and a study can still be done on the large percentage of non-voting. One can cross reference the names of 2011 against 2006 to see how many were removed, and it could help to verify if people had migrated or died, etc. I invite Mr Maxwell and other detractors to undertake a research study to determine exactly what happened in 2006 for such a low turnout and perhaps they can also tell us why there was an even lower turnout in 2011. I am certain they are not faced with the financial constraints of TRPI or NACTA and can quickly conduct such a study. Perhaps they can commission Dick Morris or some other pollster to undertake a study of the non-voters if they themselves don’t have the time. I also suggest to Mr Maxwell to request Morris to release his “findings concerning the 20% of voters who vanished from the electoral landscape in 2006.” The data can be used to cross reference the findings and general information obtained from the NACTA poll on the non-voters. As a trained sociologist, among specializations in other disciplines, I will be more than happy to study non-voters in future polls if Mr Maxwell and his AFC were to provide the funding.
Instead of criticizing just for criticism’s sake, why don’t some of the critics spend their time and money to conduct polls on voting trends and on the non-voters? Let them do their own polls and then we will have data to compare with NACTA’s. Don’t bash the messenger — step up to the plate!
Yours faithfully,
Vishnu Bisram
