With voter registration scheduled to close on Monday, the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) is charging that the preliminary voters’ list released by the Electoral and Boundaries Commission (EBC) on Wednesday is riddled with errors.
BLP Mobilization Manager Lucille Moe told reporters this afternoon most of the concerns revolved around people who had either changed their addresses in the past, or had requested changes to their addresses.
Moe said there were cases where people who had changed their addresses prior to the 2013 election appear at their old addresses on the preliminary list.
“There are several issues experienced by voters to vote in this current election. The first of them is the issue of the addresses. Monday is the last day for the transfer of voters and many voters have submitted transfer forms to the address they currently live at, yet they are still appearing on the list at their old address,” the BLP operative said at a press conference at the party’s Roebuck Street, The City headquarters.
She charged that there were hundreds of discrepancies spread across all 30 constituencies, and while she was careful not to imply any improper motives on the part of the EBC, Moe contended that she had “never seen so many issues this close to an election”.
“I myself have changed an address and gone through the change of address process and it is not a difficult one. Clearly, if you have this magnitude of problems there must be a reason, but certainly we do not know the answer to that one,” she stressed.
“People want to vote in the election, it is their right to vote in this election and we want the EBC to rectify these matters. The last day of registration is also Monday so people must be on that list by then or they would not be able to vote in this election. People are also being transferred back to their old addresses where they have not lived in over ten years,” she added.
Moe said the BLP had broached the issue of voter registration with the EBC last year and had been assured that all matters would be ironed out before the election was called.
She therefore called on the electoral management body to give the matter urgent attention before the cut-off period, revealing that a letter had been sent to the EBC seeking a meeting this weekend in a bid to have the matter rectified urgently.
“We understand that the EBC has a very short period of time to accomplish some of these things but clearly we will hope that they would have the resources and that they would be able to rectify this problem. We are confident that the EBC would rectify the problems,” she stressed.
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