Recent voter registrants to be posted for claims/objections

Last Updated on Friday, 4 October 2019, 20:05 by Writer

The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has decided that a list of persons whose fingerprints were captured in the July-August house-to-house registration exercise will be posted up at a later date during the claims and objections period, an elections commissioner said Friday.

The claims and objections period began on October 1 and will last for 49 days.

The fingerprints of 370,000 persons have since been sent to the United States to be cross-matched with those on the existing National Register of registrants to pick up any duplicates.

Pro-coalition election commissioner, Charles Corbin says results of the first batch of cross-matched fingerprints are expected back in Guyana within two weeks to allow that list to be posted up 21 days before the end of the claims  and objections period.

“It will be for twenty-one days. We are sure that all of the data will be available twenty-one days before the end of the processing period. It will be the house-to-house data that will be displayed for public review,” he said after a GECOM meeting on Friday.

Corbin says already a decision has been taken to weed out duplicate names and addresses of persons on the National Register of Registrants and the final voters’ list.

He says the addresses at which such persons were last registered will be used. “The most recent data that one has is the data that will be in force,” said Corbin.

However, opposition People’s Progressive Party election commissioner, Bibi Shadick says it does not matter whether the addresses are old or new.

She says all she is interested in is that the names and addresses of registrants appear once on the register and the final voters list. Shadick adds that it is for registrants to ensure they update their names and addresses during the claims and objections period so that they can vote. “They must check the PLE (Preliminary List of Electors). If their names are not there, make sure that their names get on there to do whatever they have to do and to make sure that their names go to a place where it will be most convenient for them to vote,” she said.