IN support of its contention that persons voted for the deceased during the General and Regional Elections, the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) has made public several death certificates of persons who were marked off on the Official List of Electors as having voted.

Death certificates were provided for Pearl Moore, Rahman Jakoon, Newton Pearson, Kenyon Thomas, Looknauth Persaud, Mohan Ramawad, Winston Martin, Simone Trotman, Ranganaden Ramsammy, Bibi Khan, Chitnandani Ramdass, Haimwatee Parasram, Ewert Reynolds and Mulchan Sukhram.

Ramdass was among the first cases of voter impersonation that were detected during the 33-day national recount at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC). Though Ramdass died on June 6, 2015, her name was marked on the Official List of Electors as having voted in Electoral District 2 (Pomeroon-Supenaam).

The 14 death certificates represent a percentage of the total number of deceased, whose names were crossed off as having voted on March 2, 2020, when the elections were held in the 10 electoral districts of the country. The Chief Elections Officer (CEO), Keith Lowenfield, in his report to the Chair of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh on June 13, had said that there were a total of 61 cases of voter impersonation involving dead people.

Based on the CEO’s report on the national recount, in Region One (Barima-Waini) there were 10 such cases, 12 in Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam), six in Regon Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara), 16 in Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica), seven in Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice), seven in Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne), two in Region Eight (Potaro-Siparuni) and one in Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo).

However, the number of “dead voters” is no match to the number of cases of voter impersonation involving Guyanese who are listed on the Official List of Electors but were out of the jurisdiction on Elections Day. Based on the CEO’s national recount report, which included Observation Reports for each of the 10 electoral districts, there were more than 4,800 cases of voter impersonation involving cases in which persons who were out of the jurisdiction were marked down as having voted.

One such person is Adler Bynoe of Werk-en-Rust, Georgetown. Bynoe was listed among 172 persons whom the Commissioner of Police and Chief Immigration Officer Leslie James had initially confirmed were out of the jurisdiction on Elections Day, and according to the APNU+AFC were marked off on the OLE as having voted.

In a letter to the Chair of the Elections Commission on June 3, 2020, Bynoe confirmed that he had been out of the jurisdiction and therefore could not have voted. “I can confirm that as a citizen of Guyana, GECOM duly registered me as an elector and my name appeared on GECOM’s Official List of Electors for the 2020 General and Regional Elections. Further, I can confirm that I am usually resident in Guyana, although I was out of the jurisdiction on Elections Day,” Bynoe wrote.

The CEO in his report had said that the total of 4,864 cases of voter impersonation (dead and migrant voters), which were unearthed by APNU+AFC were confirmed by the Elections Secretariat based on official reports submitted by the Chief Immigration Officer Leslie James and the General Registrar’s Office.

Added to those 4,864 cases of voter impersonation, there were well over 2,000 irregularities that the CEO said compromised the integrity of the electoral process.
In each of the Observation Reports, Lowenfield established that due to the anomalies and instances of voter impersonation, the General and Regional Elections held on March 2 did not satisfy the criteria of impartiality, fairness and compliance with the Constitution and the Representation of the People Act. “Consequently, on the basis of the votes counted and the information furnished from the recount, it cannot be ascertained that the results in this district meet the standard of fair and credible elections,” the chief elections officer said in his Observation Report for District One (Barima-Waini) – a position he iterated for all of the other electoral districts.

According to the CEO’s report, there were 143 instances in which Certificates of Employment were missing, 1,278 missing Oaths of Identity and 150 cases in which extra ballots were found in ballot boxes, and other instances of missing poll books and proxies. Notably, in District Four (Demerara-Mahaica) 47 ballot boxes were void of the statutorily required documents. These anomalies, the chief elections officer said, are breaches of polling procedures outlined in the Representation of the People Act and the official manual for presiding officers and other polling day officials. On June 23, 2020, the CEO, in accord with the decision of the Court of Appeal that the President of Guyana must be elected on the basis of valid votes, submitted an Elections Report which showed a victory for the APNU+AFC over the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C). He has since been accused of invalidating well over 115,000 votes.