The Supervisor of Elections in Anguilla, Ms. Arjul Wilson, has spoken in an interview with The Anguillian newspaper about plans to improve the arrangements for the next general election and the setting up of a separate Central Electoral Office.
Ms. Wilson, a trained lawyer, was given the above additional responsibility while serving as Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs. She is retired from her PS post, but continues to hold the appointment as Supervisor of Elections and in that capacity she supervised the 2015 general election for the first time.
Speaking about possible electoral changes coming up since then, Ms. Wilson told the newspaper: “What is happening is that coming out of the last election, there were a number of recommendations about how we can improve the process. Some of them included reducing the long lines with some persons waiting for up to five hours to vote, and so we decided to do something about that.
“The implementation of an ID would probably be one of them. Advanced voting would be another way of streamlining the process and making it a little simpler. We hope that the IDs will have information which we can just scan in to see whether the information we have in our system matches the identification card the voters have so that the voting lines can move quicker.”
Ms. Wilson continued: “For the first time the Central Electoral Office is a stand-alone so we are starting from scratch. We are anxious to get new persons involved and our new officers are extremely young, 19 and 20. We are hoping that if we start early we can ensure that the 2020 election is a really smooth process. Other than that, we are hoping that more people will cooperate and sign up for the electoral process and that young people, whom I know are now taking an active interest politics, should be part of that whole process. I am excited and it is an exciting time.”
Asked to explain advanced voting, the Supervisor of Elections indicated that a couple of days, or a week prior to the election, it would be arranged for all the election officers and essential officers, like the police, to cast their votes in order not to hold up the process while they attend to other duties.
“All of this is coming out of the recommendations from the Constitutional and Electoral Reform Report which is going to form the basis for the new legislation which is coming down the pipe rather soon. That would then free up those officers who have to work on those days and to get as many disabled persons or people with challenges to vote beforehand. However, it is not a free for all. You have to apply and then vetted to see whether or not you are one of those persons.”
She further said: “We had an instance, last election, where a clergyman wanted to vote but he had to attend a proceeding for one of his fallen colleagues in Antigua on the same day. He wanted to vote so badly but couldn’t vote. He wanted to give somebody his proxy, but couldn’t. In a situation like that, when he knows beforehand that he can’t be here to vote, that is a situation where a person like him would be allowed to vote. It has to be a compelling reason – not because you want to go to St. Martin that day you can vote in advance.”
Questioned further, Ms. Wilson commented: “The Constitutional and Electoral Reform Report is quite comprehensive in terms of what we do and how we are going to do it. One of the things the committee did was to ask for my input in terms of what we were going to do; and it is all in the report. It is about the new legislation to provide the guidelines to implement the new measures.”
She explained that, moving forward early would give her electoral office the necessary opportunity “to be able to reduce the amount of time people have to stand in line to vote.” She added, “In fact, if we have the Boundaries Commission and shift the districts, then we will have a lot of education to provide for the public. It is a long process and we need to start early.”
The Central Electoral Office is located in the building where the Festival Office was situated between the Inland Revenue Department and the Internal Audit Department. “It is quite comfortable with a lot of space, but we have no funds or a budget as of now,” she observed. “The Governor has committed to providing equipment and staffing to help it along. I am hoping that will work.”
