From the Supervisor of Elections – Vol II No 4: Performance Reports

From the Supervisor of Elections
Vol II Issue No 4: Performance Reports

This article presents a report on the activities of the Electoral office for April to September 2020. It helps when reading it to remember the role of the electoral office as it relates to maintenance of the voter register. It is to enroll persons, to activate voters, to respond to claims and objections that had been decided by the Registration Officers. Each quarter, a report of activities is produced; that of the 2nd & 3rd quarters (combined) are presented in this article.

A total of 608 persons were enrolled for the period. By constituency 1 to 11, the enrollments were 116, 65, 62, 27, 22, 43, 27, 78, 83, 15 and 70. These are the persons whose names appear on the monthly lists. There were 440 enrollments in St Kitts, with Constituencies 1 and 8 accounting for 44% of the enrollments. In Nevis, where the remaining 168 enrollments took place, 49% took place in Constituency 9.

We suspect that enrollment was affected by the pandemic, but between the announcement and the holding of elections, there was an intense period of enrollment.

Activation refers to those persons who whose enrollment passed public scrutiny for the mandatory two- month period. For the period 1,041 were activated. The numbers by constituency were 188, 129, 103, 57, 44, 69, 58, 163, 105, 21 & 104.

By island, on St Kitts, there were 811 activations; with Constituencies 1, 8 and 2 having 23%, 20% & 16% of the activations. On Nevis, of the 230 activations Constituencies 9 & 11 accounted for all but 21 activations (91%).

Two things must be noted with the activated voters (which is the revised monthly lists):
i) it is possible that the number of activated persons, i.e. those whose names appear on the revised monthly list is NOT the same number as those which appeared on the monthly lists as not all persons who enrolled are “activable” and
ii) the revised list published in the month is not for the month in which it is published but rather for 2 months prior.

In the period, the Revised Annual Register of Voters was published. It contained 253 less names than the Annual Register that gave rise to it. Of the removed names, 136 were certified to have died and the other 117 persons were considered ineligible to remain on the register as their registration was successfully challenged.

The office dealt with 115 claims during the period.

Each month, as required by law, the various lists were put in the public domain within the time stipulated by the Registration Officers. Again, we wish to thank the public minded persons who allow us to post at their business places. Without them we would not be able to achieve our aim of one person one vote in the right place, and fairness to all.

At the same time, we must also condemn those persons who consistently remove these lists almost immediately after they are posted. One day, with the help of the CCTV cameras, we may be able to prosecute!