'Jamaica could take a page out of VI's book'- Election Observer
Dr Winston Green said that in terms of the education of the electors it is very high, something that Jamaica could have benefitted from given the fragile state of politics there over the decades.
Dr Green was part of the Commonwealth Observer Mission that had been invited by Governor John S. Duncan OBE to observe the 2015 elections.
“First of all let me commend you for a very peaceful election. In Jamaica in the 1970s it was a bit worse but we have gotten past that now. But I must say that in terms of the education of the electors, it is very high,” he said.
He said too that the orderly conduct and the transparency were also to be commended. “As a matter of fact we in Jamaica can take a page from your book but it was really very excellent,” he said.
While the mission stated that they would be making all of their recommendations in two months’ time in their final report, Dr Green ventured to put forward one recommendation. Noting that voters were divided alphabetically from A to M and then from N to Z, he said that what could be done to speed things up is that in each polling station the numbers of names on the list could be counted and deal with them accordingly.
The observers had pointed out that there seemed to be more names between A to M rather than between N to Z and as a result the line dealing with A to M was very long compared with N to Z which hardly had people in it.
Territorial voter counting could be improved
Another observer, Honourable Ruth D. Blackman of the Turks & Caicos Islands, said that similar to the lengthy time it took to count the At Large votes, it took a long time to get the ‘All Island Candidates’ votes counted. She explained that their ‘All Island Candidate’ would be the equivalent to the VI’s At Large situation and that they only dealt with it for the first time at the last elections in the Turks & Caicos.
“For both the Turks & Caicos and the BVI maybe we need to be looking at a system that lends itself to the Territorial At Large votes being counted at the same time [so as to] speed up the process so we would know the results of the elections much quicker in the BVI and in the Turks & Caicos,” said Honourable Blackman.
She said while she and Dr Green joined the team later than the other observers they were able to take in one of the political rallies and found that it was done in typical Caribbean style with vibrant speeches and blowing of horns.
Hon Blackman added that on voting day she was impressed by the way people stood patiently in line without much of a fuss as they wanted their turn to vote. “I was also impressed by the number of young persons I saw not only voting but being a part of the process and so that tells us in the Caribbean that we have to engage our youths in the electoral process,” she said.
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It is good to know that you recognize that we can learn from each other, and feel good about the experience.