Opposition Member, Hubert Hughes, is finding fault with the registration of voters. He is charging that a number of persons have been left off the list, but Chief Minister, Osbourne Fleming, says that the new system is going very well and that there is a recourse for anyone whose name was not registered. He stressed that all that is required is for persons to supply the required documentation to have their names registered.

The matter came up in the House of Assembly on March 19 when Mr. Hughes moved a motion alleging that “the registration of voters for 2008 has revealed serious disparities from the same process in 2006.” He said many persons were complaining that their names, submitted to the Registration Officers, were omitted from the list and called for urgent measures to be taken to rectify the situation.

Mr. Fleming explained that every four years the voters’ list was updated and that at the beginning of this year a new system of continuous registration was introduced. He said that unlike in the past, when persons were registered without showing the required documents, the new system now provided for persons wishing to get on the voters’ list to submit either a birth certificate, one of their parents, a marriage certificate, a birth certificate of their grandparents, belonger status – a certificate of naturalisation, or a certificate of British Overseas Territory citizenship relating to Anguilla.

“If your name is not on the voters’ list, which is published every three months, you should march right upstairs the Social Security Building, where there are two Registration Officers who will take your name as long as you present something that shows you are an Anguillian, a belonger or whatever,” he advised.

He explained that persons wishing to vote must now do their own registration and recalled that in former years, persons with a resident stamp in their passport were wrongfully put on the voters’ list.
The Chief Minister said he could not support the motion as the machinery was in place to take care of any anomalies. “If your name is not on the voters’ list, go down to the Passport Office [with the relevant documentation] and put down your name,” he said in the House of Assembly for the information of the public.

Mr. Hughes’ motion, seconded by his Opposition colleague, Edison Baird, died from lack of support from the Government’s side of the House.

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