Persons without national identification (ID) cards and who would not have been able to get replacement cards in time for the local government can still cast their ballots in the November 12 Local Government Elections (LGEs).
This is according to Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Public Relations Officer Yolanda Ward, who told Stabroek News that persons who may have lost their national ID cards would be able to get replacements cards at the registration offices in their administrative districts.
“What we are not doing is registering new persons because that is out of our registration cycle,” she said.
Told of a complaint by an eligible elector whose ID card was lost when he was robbed and who tried getting a replacement but was told by a GECOM official in his district that he would not be able to get it until after the LGEs, Ward said, that was not the case.
She was aware, she said, that some of GECOM’s district offices had closed off the replacement of ID cards temporarily to facilitate preparatory work for the LGEs but those works are completed.
The replacement process, she said, is ongoing.
In the event that someone is without a national ID card, Ward said, “There are measures in place for people to vote without them.”
The person has to turn up at the polling station where he or she is registered to vote and state his or her name. The presiding officer has a folio of the list of voters eligible to vote at the polling station and as such will be able to match the photograph on the folio with the facial image of the elector.
“That person will have to take an oath of identity and will be allowed to vote. There will be a brief interview process to ensure that the answers provided matches the records of GECOM,” she said.
On the issue of elections observers for the LGEs, Ward said, that based on the advertisement placed in the media inviting local observer groups to observe the elections, GECOM did not receive any response from observer groups willing to participate in the elections process.
However, she noted that prior to the placement of the ads, GECOM had received letters from four local groups requesting approval to be part of an observer team monitoring the elections. The commission has indicated, she said, that it will allow those groups that have expressed an interest in observing the elections to be part of that process.
