Election fraud case postponed until November

The court proceedings in the ‘conspiracy to defraud electors’ charge which was brought against several election officers accused of rigging the March 2nd 2020 election, have been postponed until November 17.

The defendants, Keith Lowenfield, Clairmont Mingo, Roxanne Myers, Volda Lawrence, Sheffern February, Denise Bobb-Cummings, Michelle Miller, Carol Smith-Joseph, and Enrique Livan, were informed of their new court date last Thursday when the matter was called before Chief Magistrate Ann McLennan in a Georgetown court.

When the matters were called earlier in July of this year, the state’s prosecutor, attorney-at-law Darshan Ramdhani, amongst other attorneys, had made two applications before the court which included having the matters tried before one magistrate instead of three, since initially, they were slated to be called before Chief Magistrate McLennan, Principal Magistrate Sherdel Isaacs-Marcus, and Senior Magistrate Leron Daly.

The attorneys had also applied for some of the particulars of the charges to be amended since they were of the opinion that doing so would create a stronger case of stating that all the defendants played a vital role in conspiring to deceive all of Guyana and not only the electors. 

However, it is so far unknown if those applications have since been granted by the Chief Magistrate.

The charges which were initially read to the defendants in June of 2021 states that between March 2nd of 2020 and August 2nd also of 2020, they conspired with each other to defraud the electors of Guyana by declaring a false account of votes cast for the general election which was held on March 2nd, 2020.

They were also charged with committing the said offence for the regional elections which were also held on March 2nd, 2020.

At that time, they had appeared before Principal Magistrate Isaacs-Marcus and were not required to plead to the two charges and were released on $100,000 bail each.

Lowenfield, Myers, and Mingo are being represented by attorney Nigel Hughes.