THE random sampling survey being conducted by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) of some 20,000 new registrants is meant to determine the degree of error with regards to duplicates already on the National Register of Registrants Database (NRRDB).

Only fingerprint cross matching and manual side-by-side comparisons of the data on registrants can determine whether there are duplicates on the list of some 20,000 new registrants.

Commissioner Vincent Alexander provided the clarification to Guyana Chronicle in an invited comment on Monday in light of the recent criticisms of the Opposition that the survey is only being conducted on some 10 per cent of the 20,000 registrants.

Criticisms came from People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Member of Parliament (MP) Anil Nandlall on Saturday who told the Guyana Times that Government-nominated Commissioners were against the verification of the names.

“I can understand why the Government Commissioners may not want a 100 per cent verification exercise, because if this data is padded and fraudulent then the verification exercise will unmask it. However, the law mandates that not a single name must eventuate unto the OLE without verification. GECOM has an unconditional duty to ensure compliance with this legal requirement. Nothing short will suffice,” the former Attorney General asserted.

However, Alexander said that it is erroneous to suggest that house-to-house visits could address the question of duplicates. He informed: “Re-visiting people does not determine duplicates or otherwise. What is required are two acts. One act is the act of cross matching from the finger prints — there’s some difficulty with those. The other thing that is required for GECOM to do [is] side-by-side comparison between the existing National Register of Registrants, the house-to-house registration and the Claims and Objections to see if across those there are names which are duplicates that have not been identified by the biometric matching.”

Alexander further explained that there has been a gross misrepresentation of what verification means and it is surprising that the very opposition, which withheld its scrutineers needed for the verification of the information during house-to-house visits, is now all in for verification.

“Unfortunately, the PPP boycotted the exercise and are now trying to get to do what they hadn’t done previously,” he said. GECOM has decided to post, for public scrutiny, the names of the new registrants at various GECOM offices.

A photo has recently been circulating by the Opposition Leader which shows that former Chancellor of the Judiciary, Cecil Kennard, was listed as a new registrant which would form as a duplicate on the NRRDB.
Alexander acknowledged this was a case of duplication which has to be resolved by a comparison between the NRRDB, the C&O information and the house-to-house data gathered.

He explained: “It cannot be resolved by house-to-house visits at this time. That does not make sense in terms of determining whether something is a duplicate or not and how to deal with a duplicate. Once you determine something is a duplicate, GECOM has an internal process to deal with it…random sampling is going to be a process to try to determine the degree of error that we are faced with in relation to the returns from the company that did the cross-matching.”

On December 3, 2019, commissioners had updated the media that the information from the 370,000 transactions from the house-to-house exercise, cross-matched by international digital security company, Gemalto, showed that some 60,000 forms did not “attract a hit”, meaning that they were new names, not NRRDB.

However, through its own efforts, the commission found that some 17,000 persons, who were presumed to be new, were already on the database.

From the approximate 43,000 persons remaining, the Guyana Chronicle was informed that some 23,000 were persons under 18, while the remaining 20,000 are being checked.