There is always a certain percentage of persons on the Electoral Register who do not vote. They are not dead, they are not overseas, they are not religious; they simply chose not to exercise their franchise. Take for instance, in the 13 Federal elections (excluding the bye elections) held between 1961 & 2015, in the 2004 elections, as much as 59.6% of the registered voters in Nevis 10 did not vote, only 40.4% did. This was the worst performance yet.
Overall, our voter turn out as a country has never been better than the 85.1% achieved in 2010 after the greatest level of apathy ever of 58.5% in 2004. [The best turnout we have seen was in Constituency St Kitts 5 in 1971 when 92.2% cast votes.]
To vote or not to vote, of course, is the constitutional right of every person; but it is the legal right of the Electoral Body to remove the names from the register of non-voters after two consecutive periods of inactivity. Here is how Section 39 (2) of the Act records it: Notwithstanding subsection (1), a person who is registered as a voter for a constituency pursuant to this Act and who has not voted at two consecutive elections, shall have his or her name deleted from the register of voters for that constituency, without prejudice to that person’s right to make a new application for registration under this Act.”
Of course, the more persons who vote, the greater the time it takes to manually count the votes as we do. It was unavoidable, but highly questioned as to why our election results take as long as they do, but protocol must be followed.
When the doors of the polls close at the end of the day, voting continues until everyone in the line in the precincts of the polling station has voted. Then the boxes must be closed and sealed according to the procedure, and transported, under guard to the counting station. There, the boxes must be opened and the counting begins. The pick-up and counting is the responsibility of the Returning Officer. Every step is and must be done under the eyes of the political agents.
For the count, there is an official Tally Clerk and a tally person for each candidate whose job is to record the votes per candidate, and by extension to audit the count. If all tally-ers do not agree on the figures, then a recounting must be done.
The National Assembly Elections Act, at Section 88, is quite detailed as to the counting procedures to be followed.
This area of manual counting – some say of weakness - received some attention in 2013 when Returning Officers were authorised to designate a Presiding Officer to assist with the counting of votes.
I intend to take full advantage of this amendment to achieve an earlier count of the one man, one vote, in the right place and an earlier night for all.
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