The Tribune

By KEILE CAMPBELL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kcampbell@tribunemedia.net

FREE National Movement chairman Dr Duane Sands warned that the national voters register is so outdated it undermined the accuracy of the Golden Isles by-election, calling the list used “almost 15 years old,’ with as many as 3,000 voters “unlocatable".

Dr Sands said both the FNM and the Progressive Liberal Party struggled to verify voters during the contest. Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell, the PLP's chairman, declined to comment yesterday.

“There are thousands of people that we could not locate,” Dr Sands said. “The PLP, I believe, had the same experience. Notwithstanding the fact that there’s supposedly 7,900 persons on the register, I suspect that the number is far less than that.”

He said the register has not been properly reviewed or maintained.

“Scrutiny of the registry has simply not been done — not just in Golden Isles, but across the country,” he said.

Dr Sands noted the Parliamentary Registration Department’s recent removal of names from the national roll.

“The government, as you know — or the Parliamentary Registration Department — removed some 15,000 people from the register, but they did not say who those 15,000 people were,” he said. “We know that many, many other people have been added to the register.”

He argued that the country’s population movement over the past decade has far exceeded the state’s ability to track voters.

“You’re talking about what has transpired between 2011 and now — people have built houses, people have gone to different Family Islands and so on and so forth,” he said. “The principle of a living, breathing register is only as good as the ability to maintain it.”

Asked whether the registry reflects the true size of the Golden Isles electorate, Dr Sands said the numbers do not match reality.

“While we say that there were 7,900 registered voters in Golden Isles, thousands of them could not be found,” he said. “A true reflection of the numbers would be maybe 6,000 or 5,000.”

Pressed to quantify how many voters were unlocatable, he replied: “More than 3,000.”

Dr Sands directly criticised the Parliamentary Registration Department.

“They have not done the work. They have not done the necessary to ensure the veracity of the register,” he said.

He added that he does not expect the Davis administration to address the problem before the next general election.

“I wouldn’t hold my breath to expect that this administration is either interested or minded to do anything to protect our democracy,” he said.

“If we are successful, we will ensure that the register — which undergirds our democracy — is not only brought up to date, meaning that we have a new register, but that it is maintained to serve the democratic needs of this country.”

For his part, Mr Thompson insisted that the number of registered voters in Golden Isles is up to date, dismissing the idea that the voter count was flawed by deceased or moved residents who may have been assigned to a different constituency.

“We clean the register everyday,” he said. “We have removed over 16,000 persons from the register since 2017.

Once a voter registers or transfers to a different area, that information is captured, Mr Thompson said.