Daraine Luton, Staff Reporter
DIRECTOR OF Elections Danville Walker says that over 200,000 people will be removed from the June 16 voters' list following Monday's closure of its re-verification books.
"I cannot say exactly how many people will be removed from the list because our officers are still checking to ensure that the people who have come in are indeed living where they say they are," Mr. Walker told The Gleaner yesterday. "We had published the names of 218,000 people and of that number about 3,000 came forward and so I estimate it to be about 215,000," he said.
The Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) had promised to remove from the voters' list the names of people who had not satisfied the office as to their address. "Some of these are persons whose addresses have turned out (to be) garages, banks, and other business places. It is a large number and we are not going to carry forward their names, unless we hear from them," said Mr. Walker last month.
Persons whose names appeared in The Gleaner as being in need of reverification had until 8:00 p.m. Monday to furnish the EOJ with information about their addresses.
NO RUSH ON LIST
The Gleaner toured electoral centres in the Corporate area Monday and found that people were not rushing the centres to get on the list. Except for a few offices, only the EOJ staff were seen. In Central Kingston for example, an officer said the office had summoned 6,443 people to be reverified and, of this number, only 433 people had come in for reverification as at 4:00 p.m. Similarly, the office manager at the South East St. Andrew office said that just over 6,000 people were summoned to be reverified but, even at just after 6:00 p.m. Monday, fewer than 100 people had turned up.
The East Rural St. Andrew electoral centre in Papine was one of the few offices where people had come to be reverified during The Gleaner's visit. One woman with whom The Gleaner spoke said she saw her name in the newspaper to be reverified and acted on it.
"I saw my husband's name too and I told him and he came in and got it done. I have just done mine," she added before walking off.
A total of 1,428,972 people are on the current voters list, but the figure should decrease whenever the new voters' list is published.
There were 1,301,638 people on the voters list for the October 16, 2002 General Election. Mr. Walker said most of the people who have not reverified have either migrated or have become disinterested in voting.
