What Will the Voter Turnout Be on Referendum Day?

Dean Barrow

The Prime Minister also spoke of the expected voter turnout on May eight. When Guatemala held its I.C.J. referendum in April 2018, a little over two million voters participated out of seven point five million registered voters.  One point seven million persons voted in favour while seventy-six thousand voted against taking the claim to the International Court of Justice. The percentage of voters who participated was twenty-six percent. In Belize, Prime Minister Dean Barrow predicts that the voter turnout will be spectacularly high. 

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“Even if I had gone on April tenth, I don’t know that the turn will be spectacularly high and it should be since we just had re-registration. That is the, there’s has not been this elapsing of a long period of time when people go away and the list have names that are not any longer in country and so on. When you have any voting just after a re-registration you would in a normal course if it is a partisan election expect a high turnout. So if you don’t get a high turnout it is going to be I think precisely because it is not a party election. The politicians can only do so much by way of mobilization. It is one thing to energize your support to come and vote for you at an election. It is quite another to say come and vote for the country, come and vote yes to the I.C.J.  That is what we do. That is what we are obliged to do. That is what is noble to do but I don’t think that it is quite as effective as a mobilization tool as when you are appealing to people’s raw political allegiances.”