Dear Editor,

CANADIAN journalist Brian Lilley posited that, “The idea that our election could be decided by people that don’t live here; that do live here but aren’t eligible to vote or that used to live here but are dead should worry us all.” (https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/lilley-thousands-of-canadian-voter-cards-sent-to-dead-non-citizens).

Lilley was commenting on Canadian elections where a difference of 5000 votes may not be enough to affect the outcome. Yet, he felt that the threat of voter impersonation in Canada is a real problem and one that ‘should worry’ every Canadian. Lilley went on to assert that dead people voted in Canada. He said, “One political operative that I spoke to told me of comparing the voters list, the one that showed who had voted, to obituaries and other databases on recent passings. His comparison turned up many people that had voted despite being dead for years.”

Canadians may not have a problem with knowing that voter ID cards were sent to over 200,000 dead people, and they may see nothing wrong with dead people voting. But in Guyana where our elections can be; and have been decided by as little as 3,000 votes, voter impersonation can indeed affect the election outcome. Guyanese are therefore justified in their anger that a bloated electoral list containing the names of dead people and those who have emigrated was exploited by people who seek to claim victory at all costs, even at the risk of sparking a prolonged conflict.

The evidence provided by APNU+AFC showing some 60 death certificates of people whose names were marked as having voted should worry those who are serious about democracy in Guyana. The fact that a contesting party, even without doing a complete reconciliation of voters and obituaries was able to show that many dead people who voted should be enough to raise concerns about the credibility of the 2020 elections. That small sample of evidence of fraud confirms that a party or parties successfully violated the integrity of the electoral process and made it impossible for anyone to know with certainty what is “the will of the people”.

For reasons unknown, those who claim to be champions of democracy are too willing to overlook that evidence of electoral fraud. Like the Canadians, they too do not see a problem with dead people voting. But this is not Canada, and we must not allow dead people to vote while at the same time claim that we defend democracy. It seems that APNU+AFC is alone in this struggle to defend and preserve Guyana’s democracy.

Respectfully,
Max Mohamed