–during claims and objections period

WITH advancing technology significantly affecting the way we communicate in both our personal and professional lives, it appears that the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) in some regards still has some catching up to do. 
This publication is aware of concerns abroad that the voters list available on the GECOM website is not as user-friendly as it ought to be. Moreover, one of the contentions is that persons hardly ever access the website to find out whether their names are on the voters list. Maybe GECOM can provide such information to prove this contention wrong.

OFFICIAL LIST OF ELECTORS
GECOM is currently conducting a “Claims and Objections” exercise, a process that is aimed at verifying the current Preliminary List of Electors to produce an Official List of Electors (OLE).
As such, the elections management authority has posted the PLE at prominent locations in all of the Registration Divisions or Sub-Divisions and at all of the GECOM permanent and temporary Registration Offices across Guyana.
Members of the electorate are tasked with going through these lists with thousands of names, one by one, to find their own name and ensure that their registration is reflective of their current residence.
A reporter from Guyana Chronicle visited the Georgetown City Hall where he perused the list for his name. After some minutes, he found it.
However, this is not to say that the process was not frustrating. It is easy to see why a voter would be discouraged to weed through pages and pages of electors to find their own name or in some cases not to find their name at all.

NO SHORTCUT
Although there were attempts to publish the preliminary list on the GECOM website at www.gecom.org.gy, it would be interesting to know how many citizens actually visit this page to locate their names on the voter list. Similarly, there is an added challenge, whereby interested persons must box through close to 8,000 pages in order to find their names. There is no shortcut.
It is safe to say that GECOM has not made reasonable accommodation to ensure a user-friendly website, where, rather than whisking through 8,000 pages, a member of the electorate could type their name and other information into a search bar and the results would pop-up after the software has examined the list. In the dynamic world of technological advancements, does this seem too impossible to undertake?
Even a step such as this would reduce, by a small margin, the voter fatigue associated with the claims and objections period. It was reported in the media on Thursday that GECOM Chairman, Dr. Steve Surujbally had challenged the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) to state clearly their evidence to support a claim of irregularities in the voters’ list amounting to some 78,000 new registrants compared to the previous list used in 2011.
Dr. Surujbally rejected the claim, and indicated that GECOM would be reviewing its data, and if such irregularities in the list are found, then corrective measures would be taken.
As the country holds its breath for either Local Government or Regional and Regional Elections, GECOM has been asked to do its part to ensure that ‘voter fatigue’ is reduced.

(By Derwayne Wills)