The Government of the Virgin Islands is proposing to make several changes to the Elections Act, 1994, which will remove the restriction periods and consolidate the forms needed to make adjustments to personal information on the voters provisional list.
This is according to a recent post-Cabinet Decision statement dated December 31, which outlined the proposed changes to be made to the legislation.
The statement said that the Cabinet “agreed to amend Sections 10(2), 19(1) and Schedule 2, Form Number 3 of the Elections Act, 1994 to make the period, which currently restricts voters to address omissions, name change, etc., to be a continuous one.”
It added, “[Cabinet] approved the consolidation of Form Numbers 1, 3, 7, and 8, listed in Schedule 2 of the Elections Act, to include the collection of particulars of voters, as well as to facilitate changes of voters’ residence in the same electoral district to be captured in the new Virgin Islands Voter Registration Form.”
To put this into perspective, Sections 10 (2) and 19 (1) of the Elections Act allows members of the public to make changes to their name, address or occupation once it has been wrongly stated in the provisional list.
The changes ordinarily are only allowed to be made within a 10-day period following the publication of the provisional list.
The proposed amendments would therefore allow for changes to be made for an unspecified period of time, up until the day of the elections.
284News also reached out to the Supervisor of Elections Ms. Scherrie Griffin who explained the proposed changes.
She said they will aim to improve the administrative processes relating to voters’ registration.
The Cabinet also decided that the Office of the Deputy Governor provide drafting instructions to the Attorney General to make the necessary amendments to the legislation.
Once those amendments have been made, it is expected that the drafted legislation will be brought before the House of Assembly to be read, debated and passed.
For the full details of this story, tune into to 284News 6pm newscast.