Village council election process has minor flaws

ruth meighan

While the elections are going according to schedule, there have been a few bumps along the road. There have been physical confrontations in some area and reports of public drinking, which is prohibited on election days. The issue of accountability in the process was also raised when one candidate requested a recount of the ballots because she claimed several ballots were unaccounted for. News Five sat down today Chief Elections Officer, Ruth Meighan, to address those concerns, starting with alcohol consumption during elections.

Ruth Meighan, Chief Elections Officer, Elections & Boundaries Dept.

“We have issued the notice and I think if you’ve been listening, we’ve been airing them on the media and we have also sent it into the newspaper so that people can know it is an offense to sell alcohol and by extension I’m think that it also means that on election day, the consumption of alcohol should be avoided. Of course the police department supports us in the election period and they are the ones who would ensure that people comply with that regulation. The elections and boundaries department is, for the first time, since 2001, conducting the entire Village Council Elections because prior to that we used to play a supervisory role for the election but the Elections and Boundaries Commission has now taken it back from the Ministry of Rural Development so what we’re trying to do here is to standardize the process and have people go out there. We implement some of the same processes that would apply for General Elections like we do with the sale of liquor and other areas that we think we need to strengthen to make the process a little smoother. So the same regulations or processes would apply.”

Delahnie Bain

“Is there anything in place to make sure that everything goes—everything is accounted for because we’ve also had, like the other day, the young lady Marita was requesting a recount of the ballots and so on. What do you have in place to make sure that there are no discrepancies along the way?”

Ruth Meighan

“I don’t know if there are any discrepancies, I wouldn’t say that there were. I think the issue, as far as our clerk is saying is that during the counting, there were several ballots that were rejected for whatever reason. The ballot could be rejected because it does not have the signature of the election clerk or the person is uncertain who the individual actually wanted to vote for or something is unclear. So what the clerk does or should be doing at those counting is to it show the people who are in the polling station listen, I am rejecting the ballot because of one of the things that we can reject a ballot on. We go through that process so if there are any objections to the rejection then it can be dealt with then and there and it was dealt with, according to the election clerk at the counting so the request that there was need for a recount in her view, it was not necessary.”

The elections are scheduled to run up until June sixth.