Portia supports easier ID process during elections
PRIME Minister and People’s National Party (PNP) President Portia Simpson Miller is in support of an easier method of using identification cards for voting in elections, following the long wait experienced by some in polling divisions across the Corporate Area yesterday.
Reports from some constituencies suggest that the voting process in some divisions crawled at snail’s pace, with some voters expressing their frustration and leaving polling divisions without casting their ballots.
The cry was loud at polling division 35 at 6 Dillsbury Avenue, Barbican, in St Andrew North East, which was contested by the incumbent Delroy Chuck of the Jamaica Labour Party, and Lisa-Ann Edwards of the PNP.
Voters complained that they had to wait in short queues for more than two hours before they finally got their chance to mark the ‘X’ on the ballots.
“I have my voter’s ID, and when I voted this morning they didn’t ask me for it, but I would support people using for example a driver’s licence, which is a form of ID, to speed up the process,” Simpson Miller told the Jamaica
Observer in an exclusive interview at her constituency office along Waltham Park Road in her St Andrew South West constituency.
“That’s why I am going on the road to check on those because I have received reports of slow voting,” the prime minister said.
Meanwhile, voter Kirk Kennedy expressed his anger to the Observer while waiting to exercise his franchise at the Dillsbury Avenue location.
“They are saying that PD (polling division) 35 is taking long, because a lot of persons in PD 35 did not take their voter’s IDs. The law of averages does not support that argument,” Kennedy vented.
“They said that PD 35 is the largest PD. Now having known that, it would seem stupid to not have made provisions for that by way of increasing the number of election workers. It cannot be that you have people here for two and a half hours and not voting. I am here for two hours and 25 minutes and still haven’t voted. It makes no sense. For the past two and a half hours in PD 35 its only three people’s names that have been called.
“If persons do not have their IDs, those who have should not be punished for it. In today’s democracy this is not what I expect,” Kennedy said.
One electoral worker, who declined to give her name, confirmed that the lack of voter identification cards was causing the holdup.
“It’s just that they did not have their IDs. It has nothing to do with the election day workers not working hard,” she said.
