The Tribune

By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Chief Reporter

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

THE NUMBER of registered voters for the upcoming general election is just over 181,000, according to Parliamentary Commissioner Sherlyn Hall, who said his team was still hard at work weeding out the names of deceased people from the register before it is certified next week.

Mr Hall confirmed his department’s plans to have the register certified on Monday.

“We’re still taking out dead people,” he said. “We’re up to 181,000, we still taking out dead people ‘cos we find people who dying so we still taking out dead people.”

On April 14, the voter register was confirmed to be at 174,070.

When questioned about the apparent increase, Mr Hall said: “It’s just over 181,000 now, the last week or two (of registration) we had hundreds and thousands of people coming to register all over the country. We’re going to certify the register on the first of May so we’re still doing corrections.”

The Parliamentary Registration Department confirmed via its Facebook page that the voter register stands at 181,675 as of Wednesday. There were 172,128 people registered to vote in the 2012 general election.

The voter register was closed on April 12, giving the department 14 to 15 days from that date to clean up the hundreds of reported errors presently on the register.

Free National Movement Leader Dr Hubert Minnis said earlier this month he is “doubtful” that the Christie administration could produce a “clean” register before the electorate heads to the polls. The party’s chairman, Sidney Collie, also raised “grave concerns” regarding the election register, pointing to the discovery of 72 pages of duplicate registrations, names printed of people born over 200 years ago and some who were born in 2017.

Mr Collie described this as “negligence” and “ineptitude”, saying there are other “irregularities” that have come to light pointing to people who were reportedly issued citizenship and voter’s cards on the same day.

Mr Hall has maintained his confidence that the department will produce a clean register, adding last week that “the register is only as clean as the co-operation we receive from the voters”.