In an interview on our affiliate podcast “Below De belt” on Monday, May 9, 2022, Opposition nominated Commissioner of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Vincent Alexander highlighted the need for biometrics to be used as fraud prevention measures at polling stations.
“At minimum at this time, we should look towards using biometric features for the identification of voters at the place of polls. Faced with a list that is known not to be clean, one should create a barrier which does not allow persons to vote for the dead or those who are overseas, and that barrier can well be a biometric feature at the place of poll.” Alexander stated.
In 2021 the Ministry of Health estimated the adult population of Guyana to be 513,000 when they stated that 396,042 or 77.2 percent of adults are partially vaccinated against COVID-19. With the list of electors having 661,000 registered voters, the Ministry of Health’s numbers would indicate that the list is bloated by 148,000.
Attempts to clean the list through a House-to-House registration process were halted by a court ruling that prevents the creation of a new voters list. Alexander posited that biometrics is an example of “mechanisms that can be used in the face of the difficulty the faulty judgment has placed us in.”
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