The Tribune

By KHRISNA VIRGIL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kvirgil@tribunemedia.net

PARLIAMENTARY Commissioner Sherlyn Hall was adamant yesterday that his department did not do a poor job in its handling of last week’s constitutional referendum despite the piecemeal release of results and apparent errors in figures identified by The Tribune.

In an interview with this newspaper yesterday, Mr Hall was on the defensive as he contended that the Parliamentary Registration Department released the referendum results “in time”, arguing that the regulations the department adheres to do not give a specific timeframe when vote totals are to be made public. He said the regulations only stipulate that this is to be done “as soon as is practical”.

However, when asked if his department needed more funding and resources to ensure a smooth process for the impending general election, he responded: “All government departments need extra resources, including ourselves.”

He also said: “In 2002, the (constitutional) referendum was held on February 27 and the official result was published on March 4. It took five days to publish those results. With this equality referendum, we took three days to publish.

“We did not do a poor job. We got them out in time. The schedule does not give a specific timeframe and the regulations say as soon as is practical. I am not supposed to publish an analysis of the results. My job is to give the numbers of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ votes.”

The department has been heavily criticised since last week.

Last Thursday, National Security Minister Dr Bernard Nottage, who has responsibility for elections, was unemotional in the face of the outrage Bahamians have expressed over the department’s confusing and delayed process in announcing results of Tuesday’s referendum.

“I don’t know what went wrong or if anything went wrong,” he told reporters at the House of Assembly.

Dr Nottage said the number of questions on the ballot, coupled with issues like scattered power outages, contributed to the delay in the release of results.

He said last week: “What I know is this, the four questions were on each ballot and each ballot therefore had to be examined. The examination takes a lot longer because you had to count “yes” and “no” for each of the questions. And so this is one of the things that served the process bad. Secondly, I understand that there were some power outages that affected the process of getting the results from some areas. That’s it. I don’t think there was any particular motive.”

A day after the referendum, the results from some polling stations still had not been released. And on Tuesday night, the Parliamentary Registration Department released results for only six of 38 constituencies. Additionally, Mr Hall decided not to release polling division results as they came in, instead opting to wait for all the votes from an entire constituency before issuing them.

However, Dr Nottage said the integrity of the process should not be called into question. But he said that he disagreed with Mr Hall’s decision to withhold results until results from all divisions in particular constituencies were received.

On Tuesday night amid chaotic scenes, the department was blaming electrical failures, technical issues and procedural breaches for its inability to report totals for polling stations throughout the country.

“Basically, our fax (machines) are down because the (media) had to do some gymnastics with cabling, so whatever mechanism that I think you all did, (polling stations) had a difficulty communicating by fax to us. So most of the results were telephoned, by cell, etc,” Mr Hall said last Tuesday.

According to Mr Hall, a power outage limited reports from the Montagu constituency. The department released the full results on Thursday, however the data did not indicate the number of spoiled ballots or what the overall voter turnout was.