EBC meets to discuss decision not to allow COVID-positive people to vote

An emergency meeting has been called by the Electoral and Boundaries Commission.

Barbados TODAY has been reliably informed that this is as a result of the controversial decision not to allow citizens tested positive for COVID-19 to vote in the upcoming January 19 election. 

A source told Barbados TODAY that this decision is expected to be amended during the meeting.

This morning head of the COVID-19 Monitoring Unit, Ronald Chapman described it as “a hard pill to swallow” but also indicated that no provisions would be made for alternative voting options outside of the traditional in-person practice.

Barbados TODAY understands that Chapman’s comments sparked swift public outrage, which has now caused the EBC, led by its chairman Leslie Haynes Q.C., and vice-president Hal Gollop Q.C, to meet with its members at 2:30 pm via Zoom.

During a press conference hosted by the EBC to give an update on its election preparedness this morning, Chapman said: “At no point in time would you want to disenfranchise someone. It is one of the fundamental rights of who we are as a democracy. However, we have to recognise, and I will repeat it, those isolation facilities are extensions of the QEH. They are not institutions in themselves and I do not remember any time in the past . . . where provisions were made for persons who are in the hospital to vote. And a lot of those persons who would have been in the QEH and so on, those persons were not infectious. They were probably in there recovering from heart disease, trauma or something of that sort. What we have now is a disease that is highly infectious.”

At the time Gollop, in highlighting provisions had indeed been made in previous elections for shut-ins and people in district hospitals to vote, warned that because of the Constitutional nature of the decision, the EBC should first seek a legal opinion before making any definitive statements.