On Tuesday, the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) spent its statutory meeting discussing two more proposals that government-nominated commissioners argued would strengthen the Official List of Electors while opposition-nominated commissioners stressed that they would “disenfranchise voters”.
Speaking on Tuesday on behalf of the government-nominated commissioners, commissioner Vincent Alexander explained after the meeting that the commission is now considering removing from the list the names of approximately 20,000 persons who have not collected their National Identification Cards (ID Card) since the 2008 House to House registration exercise (HtH).
Alexander argued that if the proposal is approved by the commission this failure to uplift could be used as a means to lodge an “objection” to the inclusion of those names on the Official List of Electors (OLE).
“We are using the ID cards issue to determine the presence of our voters, their existence. It’s like an objection. So the issue is not the ID cards; the issue is that these persons since 2008 and beyond 2008 have not, in any way, presented themselves to be present, to be known, to be alive, to be existing, to be resident, and then calling them, writing to them, gives us an opportunity to make a determination in the context of like an objection as to where are they. Are they real people at this time?” Alexander sought to explain. He noted that the commission has over the last few years sought to locate some of these persons through visits to their registered address and registered mail.
Currently persons may object to an inclusion on the OLE if a person is not of legal voting age, dead, not a citizen of Guyana or a citizen of a Commonwealth country living in Guyana for at least a year.
There is no direct correlation between the right to vote and the possession of an ID card as established by the 1997 Esther Pereira Elections Petition.
This point was raised on Tuesday by opposition-nominated Commissioner Robeson Benn who argued that while some of the 20,000 may be dead some may have migrated and even if they were to travel to Guyana on the day of the elections they have a right to vote.
His colleague Bibi Shadick stressed that such a move would be akin to deregistration and noted that a court action would be filed to challenge any such decision by a “majority” of the commission.
“I’m not going for that. Apparently these commissioners are intensely afraid of allowing people to vote so they are trying as hard as they can to get as many people as they can not to exercise their franchise. You can’t disenfranchise people that’s a battle I will fight to the end,” she said.
The second proposal provides for persons who did not participate or who were not registered during the 2019 HtH to be “highlighted” on the OLE.
Shadick was contemptuous of the suggestion noting that a Presiding Officer could use such highlighting as a means to block voters.
“Any Presiding Officer seeing such highlighting will think that the person should not be allowed to vote because they haven’t done something,” she argued.
Alexander however maintained that the proposal will only create awareness of people whose whereabouts are unknown.
“All it means is that you create an awareness of people whose whereabouts are unknown and, therefore…create a greater alertness at the polling station when people come to vote in those names because, as we have said, at the very inception, a bloated list provides the opportunity for multiple and substitute voting and so you need to be alert about the names which can be used for substitute voting,” he stressed.
The current list of electors contains 646, 625 entries but government has continuously argued that this number is bloated by at least 200,000. A HtH was initiated on July 20 to cleanse this list but it was truncated after acting Chief Justice Roxane George ruled that existing registrants could not be excised from a new voters’ list unless they were deceased or otherwise disqualified under Article 159 (2), (3) or (4) of the Constitution.
This ruling has since been partially appealed by Attorney General Basil Williams who has argued that Section 6 of the Registration Act provides for “residency” during the period of a qualifying date as a requirement for registration.
Section 6 (2)(a) of the Act specifies that “it shall be lawful for the commission by order with effect from a specific date to authorise the registration of all persons in Guyana of the age of 14 years and over who at said date are resident in Guyana.”
