The Voters’ List Will Never Be Cleaned Up – By Don Mitchell
Dear Mr Editor,
I was going to send you the letter below for anonymous publication. It is written satirically. It is my effort to understand and to explain through satire why the administration is attempting to pass the new Elections Bill, while secretly and surreptitiously omitting from it the Voters’ List and campaign financing reforms recommended by the CERC.
It is written from the point of view of an imaginary, long-serving Member of the Anguilla House of Representatives. I imagine him giving his reasons for not accepting the reforms of cleaning up the Voters’ List and regulating campaign spending, and for keeping quiet about leaving out these reforms from the Bill for a new Elections Act published on the government website for discussion.
But, I have been persuaded that the letter by itself would be counter-productive. It is said that many Anguillians don’t do figures of speech. They read irony and sarcasm literally. Metaphors and similes, it seems, cause them confusion. Double entendre, even in calypso, is lost on literal-minded people. That is what happens to the brains of people who believe the fantastical fables of the Old Testament to be the literal truth. It seems that sadly we have a lot of those in Anguilla.
So, to avoid misunderstanding, I am happy to let your readers know that I have written the anonymous letter below.
Yours sincerely,
Don Mitchell
“Dear Editor,
Don Mitchell is an idiot. Whatever made him think we would allow the List to be cleaned up? Does he have any idea how many years, decades, I have struggled to get family and friends who live in the USA onto the List, so they can come to Anguilla at election time to vote for me? I have children born in the USA. They have never resided in Anguilla. But they come to vote for me whenever I buy them a ticket. He wants to tell me my own children are not qualified to vote for me? I will never agree to that.
It gets worse. He says that under the Constitution my children were never qualified to be on the List in the first place, as they never resided here. And, now he wants to make it even more difficult for me to get them on the List by saying they have to be “ordinarily resident”? That means they have to live and work in Anguilla before they can get on the List. How does he expect me to win the next election, if all my family and friends who live overseas are taken off the List? Is he crazy?
Does he have any idea how much money I have invested over the past decades to get these supporters on the List? Does he know how I had to beg and solicit funds to be able to pay to win my seat? I paid for my supporters to fly into Anguilla and fill out the form to be put on the List in the first place. Every election I pay for them to fly into Anguilla to vote for me. And, now I must waste all that money and effort I have invested, and have to start all over again? Never happen!
Ten years ago we managed to get the old system of periodic enumeration replaced by the present system of continuous registration. Under the old system, every five years the old Voters’ List was abandoned, and the new one was prepared from scratch. We and the Opposition both agreed the old system was cumbersome and expensive. We knew that once we could trick the electoral office into registering all our disqualified supporters, and we abolished the enumeration process, they could never be removed from the List until they died. Even after they died, we could keep them on for years more. Now he wants us to abandon all that investment and face the uncertainty of a cleaned up List? No way!
We, incumbent politicians, love our Voters’ List. Leave our Voters’ List alone!
And, no, we are not going to the public to explain anything to them. Anguillians don’t want to know. They are mushrooms; they like being kept in the dark.
Yours Sincerely,”
[Name of the author withheld at his request]
