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Clean up

by Emmanuel Joseph
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Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Angela Taylor says the Electoral and Boundaries Commission (EBC) will be embarking on a review of this country’s voters’ list. The result will determine if a constituency revision is required.

She said on Monday that the EBC will be conducting the exercise to validate the addresses of residents living in the various constituencies.

“Once that is completed, it will determine if we need to review the constituency boundaries. That project, which is a sub-project of the new National ID Card project, will take between three to four months. As you know, an address can be separated by a road,” Taylor told Barbados TODAY.

“The population of St Michael is dwindling while the population of St Philip is increasing because people are moving out of St Michael into St Philip,” the Chief Electoral Officer explained as an example of the population shift.

Meanwhile, electoral authorities have announced their intention to remove nearly 1 200 names from the Register of Electors which was published on January 31, this year.

The Commission last Thursday informed Barbadians via a public notice in the press of its intention to delete the names of the deceased people.

“We are safe because we get all of our information directly from the Registry now. So we have not had anybody saying we took off the wrong person in a long time,”  Taylor said.

“The last time we had something like that, we took off junior rather than senior; the father and son have the same name, and we had inadvertently removed the wrong one. But we have not had any [further] challenge because we are getting the information directly from the Registry,” the electoral chief explained.

However, the EBC is still asking Barbadians at home and abroad to let them know in writing by December 28 if any of the names on the 54-page list are still alive. The names to be deleted may be viewed on the website of the Electoral and Boundaries Commission and at the office.

The commission said that information should be submitted to the office at Level 1, Warrens Towers 2, Warrens, St Michael.

And while President of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) Dr Ronnie Yearwood wants to give more thought to how the method of deletion works before sharing his views, leader of the Alliance Party for Progress (APP), Bishop Joseph Atherley is concerned about the reliability of the process.

Today, while welcoming the move to purge the register, APP leader Bishop Atherley questioned the reliability of the process.

“We have always known that the electoral list of Barbados is inflated. There are a lot of people who live outside of Barbados who have not been here in a while who are still on the list and also the process that they are using for deletion of names is not the most reliable. I think that came to light recently with the National Insurance who was paying people who had been deceased,” he contended.                                            “I do not know that in principle I have a complaint about the deletion of names. I can tell you that I know for a fact…I used to live in Hindsbury Road…and there was one instance where a lady who I knew personally voted in elections in 2018 and she had not been in Barbados for 20 years, and she did not return for elections,” Bishop Atherley claimed.

“But I don’t know that in general I have any major concern that they put out a list saying they are going to remove some names, because the list needs to be cleaned. My concern is that they use a proper process to clean and that they do get it cleaned,” the APP leader asserted.                                                                                              The Chief Electoral Officer said this would be the second time for the year the Register of Voters was being cleaned, the last being in April.                                                                             She explained that the process is conducted every six months. The existing register of electors stands at 266,339. 

emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb

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