…GECOM commissioner warns
LONGSTANDING Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Commissioner, Vincent Alexander, has warned that the electoral wrongdoings being unearthed during the ongoing recount process could impact the outcome of the March 2, 2020 elections.
He told the media, on Monday, that whether the wrongdoings and discrepancies witnessed thus far do impact the results depend on their magnitude and the impact of said magnitude on the ballots cast. “Any electoral process, even if you have wrongdoing, the precedent has always been to look at the magnitude of the wrong doing to see if that magnitude could affect the results. For example, if you have an election where you come up with a count where the difference [gap between political parties] is 20, 30, 40 votes and the wrongdoing is 80 or 100 votes, there’s a serious problem because the wrongdoing exceeds the difference and therefore could impact on the final results,” he explained.
ADDRESSING WRONGDOINGS
The opposition has been repeatedly urging the commission to restrict the number of objections being raised, particularly by the APNU+AFC. The coalition party has made claims during the process that a number of migrated and deceased persons have been listed as voting in the March 2, 2020 General and Regional Elections.
These allegations have been placed in observation reports for the commission to deliberate upon at future date.
The APNU+AFC has also objected to cases where the Official List of Electors (OLE), poll books and oaths of identity are missing from various ballot boxes. Even as the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) has been pressing for a simple, numerical recount, the coalition has argued for a “credible recount”, one which gives attention to such anomalies.
However, the question still remains as to how the elections commission will deal with the wrongdoings or discrepancies highlighted. Commissioner Alexander sought to explain that some matters can immediately be corrected while others will have to be deliberated upon after the recount process. Giving an example, he said that spoilt ballots which ought not to have been deemed spoilt, can be corrected immediately during the recount process.
He said that in such a case, the count and therefore the outcome of the elections will also be impacted because parties would now be receiving additional votes. However, when it comes to matters such missing affidavits, which are needed to confirm that a person not in possession of national identification was authorised to vote, the commission must enter into deeper discussion on how these cases will be treated with depending on their magnitude.
“If you have a certain number of persons who are listed as persons who didn’t have ID cards, but there is no affidavit to show that they were authorised to cast that vote, you can’t go into that box and identify those votes, the system doesn’t allow for that because the votes are secret in the nature of how the document is composed. So, that raises a question that has to be addressed at the end of the process: what has been the magnitude of that kind of occurrence and how does one, in the context of that magnitude, address the question of the results?” the commissioner explained.
DATA COLLECTION LACKING
When it comes to objections made with regards to deceased or migrated persons, he said that these objections will have no merit without proof. He said that proof can come in the form of a death certificate or migration records. Citing the National Registration Act, he said that the law provides for migration records to be presented to the commission periodically. Upon further check, the Guyana Chronicle found that Section 40 (2) of the Act provides for the Chief Immigration Officer to send to GECOM’s Chief Registration Officer, “once in every three months a report of the names, the dates of departure from Guyana or return to Guyana…”
The Act states that the ‘Commissioner’ shall determine the interval between such reports but such reports, in the absence of direction, should not exceed three months.
Alexander added: “When the Chief Registration Officer gets that information, he can then determine in the instances of people who have not returned how that is dealt with in relation to the compilation of the Registrar of Registrants.” He said that while GECOM can have party agents provide proof of their claims, the commission can also resort to the aforementioned reports to make its own verification.
However, Alexander doubts whether the periodical reports have been submitted over the years, which he said not only goes against the Act, but negatively impacts the work of the commission. He used the occasion to advocate for a single national database which would see the merging of data from agencies such as the National Insurance Scheme (NIS), the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), the commission and all others necessary.
He also noted that there is a deficiency with regards to how deaths are recorded in Guyana and greater efficiency in this regard would allow the General Registrar Office to pass on to GECOM a complete and up-to-date general list of the dead. “There is a problem with the way in which we handle data. I wouldn’t say a part of the problem is GECOM [but] a part of the impact of the problem is on GECOM,” he said.
Source: https://issuu.com/guyanachroniclee-paper/docs/guyana_chronicle_epaper_12_05_2020