THE ELECTORAL Advisory Committee (EAC) is to spend more than $3 million to deliver roughly 200,000 voter identification cards left uncollected since the general elections of December 1997.
EAC chairman Professor Errol Miller said the commencement date for the house-to-house distribution of the cards is April 17. He explained that while the Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) was mandated by law to conduct an enumeration exercise, the EAC had responsibility for distribution of the cards. He was speaking yesterday at a press briefing at the EAC's Old Hope Road office.
The EAC head said the committee was trying to avoid a repeat of the situation in the recent by-election in St. Ann North East where persons without identification cards were allowed to vote only after they correctly answered questions related to their biographic data. He pointed out that this method slowed the process while proving an inconvenience to the elector. "People are just not taking the issue of the ID card seriously," he said before boasting about the quality of the card and its national reach.
Already 80 per cent or roughly 970,000 of the 1,213,456 voter ID cards have been distributed. They were picked up at fixed centres in the different constituencies. The urban centres reportedly have the highest distribution rates.
Meantime, the 4,800 persons found to have been enumerated more than once, will be given a chance to explain themselves at sit-ins to be held in each constituency beginning May. The purpose of the exercise according to Professor Miller was to allow the individuals whose fingerprints and addresses appeared on the voters list as many as three times, a chance to clear their name.
"Before we prosecute the person... we want to hear from the person exactly what happened," he said. But he warned that their failure to attend the sit-ins could result in criminal charges being brought against them.
"If they don't show up and they can't explain it or insist that they are different persons then we will take action." A notice will be posted at least 21 days before the sit-ins are held.
The multiple registrations, a breach of the Representation of the People Act, were picked up during the cross-matching exercise to clean the list. Professor Miller said the forum for individuals to explain themselves was important since the method of house-to-house and fixed-centre registration was being used in an enumeration exercise for the first time locally.
