By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Chief Reporter

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

PARLIAMENTARY Commissioner Sherlyn Hall yesterday vowed that his department will clean up the voter register and “get it right” for the country’s general election after a report revealed that hundreds of names have been duplicated across multiple constituencies.

Mr Hall emphasised that the register was a manual system, and as such, most of the discrepancies were due to human error at the data-entry level.

Insisting that “no typo” will jeopardise the election, he advised that his department took responsibility for the mistakes and noted they have 14 to 15 days to clean up the register once it is closed.

As for duplicate registrants, he maintained that the onus was on each applicant not to commit perjury by registering more than once.

Mr Hall said: “The system is manual. When you appear before the revising officer, he asks, ‘did you register before or after October 2015?’ The person has a responsibility to speak the truth, plus we give each person a receipt.

“I could remember when I registered, certainly you can remember when you registered, so the onus is on you to speak the truth so that you do not register again.”

Pressed further for an explanation on the discrepancies, Mr Hall said: “Yeah, most of them (are human error), the typos yeah, the duplicates are people. Whether they did it deliberately or not some say I forgot I registered, so I go to the revising officer because the question that was asked to you is if you registered before and once you sign that second logbook and you registered before, you’re committing perjury by saying no I didn’t register.”

Mr Hall added: “We will do the best job to clean up the register; the law gives us 14 to 15 days, we’ll get it right. We’re going to get the register cleaned up. No typo will jeopardise the election, the name of the person is in the right polling station, in the right constituency.”

The discrepancies were published by The Nassau Guardian yesterday, in an article that stated the register is “in a mess,” and also noted discrepancies concerning birth dates that were from previous centuries.

In one published example, the birthdate of a man registered in Killarney polling division number five is listed as October 3, 1764.

The Tribune requested a copy of the register yesterday, but was advised that there would be none available until Friday.

Yesterday, Mr Hall took issue with the newspaper’s characterisation, stating: “I would not say it’s in a mess. There have been some mistakes, typos and we are doing those corrections as we speak.”

He continued: “In any organisation you have secretaries who are typing stuff, they make mistakes because they’re humans, and when we find the mistakes made we do the necessary corrections.

“With respect to some duplicate persons whose name appears twice,” he said, “the onus is on the applicant to speak the truth and nothing but the truth.”

Last month, a Harbour Island man faced the charge of making a false declaration, contrary to the Parliamentary Elections Act.

Andrew Johnson, 57, and a long serving Water and Sewerage Corporation employee, denied the charge before Magistrate Samuel McKinney and his trial is set for April 25.

Mr Johnson’s arrest followed an announcement by Mr Hall that several persons had attempted to register twice at different locations for the same constituency, adding that the irregularity was picked up by the Parliamentary Registration Department’s computer database.

At a Free National Movement (FNM) rally in Cat Island the previous week, party Leader Dr Hubert Minnis claimed that the Parliamentary Registration Department’s computer system crashed and erased the names of registered voters.

Dr Minnis did not offer evidence of this, but claimed that the government was trying to “steal” the 2017 general election.

Mr Hall denied those claims.

At that time, National Security Minister Dr Bernard Nottage defended the integrity of the system against what he described as recurring accusations levelled at the Parliamentary Registration Department. He charged that attempts to discredit those tasked with handling the electoral process was “shameful”, pointing to the country’s record for hosting democratic elections.

The Parliamentary Registration Department has been under intense scrutiny in recent months, as critics across the political divide have raised concerns over the department’s capacity to conduct the elections in light of its handling of the two referenda this term.