…Alexander says list bloated with over 600,000 electors

THE Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) is set to certify an Official List of Electors (OLE) of 661,028 persons today for eligible voting in the March 2, General and Regional Elections.

The decision to finalise the OLE came following some 88,000 necessary address changes to the Revised List of Electors (RLE). However, Commissioner Vincent Alexander is convinced that the large number of persons on the list is evidence that it is bloated. “Clearly we are going forward with a bloated list because there’s no circumstance under which a population of 750,000 plus with a school population of approximately 200,000 can produce a voters list of 661, 000,” Commissioner Vincent Alexander said.

A breakdown provided showed that the National Register of Registrant (NRR) initially started off with 663,365 and 646, 625 were extracted for the Preliminary List of Electors (PLE). Of this number, the General Registrar’s Office (GRO) removed 6,094 deceased persons; there were 68 successful objections; 16, 642 new registrants from the house-to-house registration exercise and 4,258 from the claims and objections (C&O) exercise.
There were other omissions but the RLE eventually came down to 661, 378 after which over 300 duplicates were identified and removed. “The OLE will be certified by tomorrow,” Commissioner, Robeson Benn had also confirmed on Tuesday.

However, the opposition-nominated commissioners are not pleased that they only received the list of changes to address as of Tuesday. “From 91,000 the number has gone down to 88,876 and we have now been given that and the OLE is being certified tomorrow,” Commissioner Bibi Shadick stated. The commission was previously catering to some 91,000 changes of address coming from persons who participated in the house-to-house registration exercise. Benn had noted on Tuesday that deaths for November and December will not be removed by the GRO from the OLE. He also said that persons still to uplift their Identification (ID) Cards from years prior can do so and GECOM is making arrangement for new registrants to also receive their cards.